A conversation with writer and researcher Heather Davis and Sprout artists Anna Rose Hopkins and Marina Zurkow about the legacies of plastic, oceans, and kin, and infinity, as part of our series of programs around the installation Languish at the End of the Ocean (2022) by Hopkins and Zurkow, presented in Sprout Hinge Nap Wobble. This immersive installation can be experienced at EFA Project Space through May 14. Fashioned as a self-service spa, the installation features the artists’ guided meditation Soupy Salty Sonic: A Liquid Wanting which invites the audience to voyage through undersea depths as their body morphs to become part of the ocean.
Please RSVP on Eventbrite for the Zoom link.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Curated by Dylan Gauthier, Radhika Subramaniam and Marina Zurkow, and featuring installations by Gaye Chan + Nandita Sharma, Anna Rose Hopkins + Marina Zurkow, Del Hardin Hoyle, Sal Randolph, and collaborators, Sprout Hinge Nap Wobble is a group exhibition that invites the public to feel planetary relationalities at a time of planetary crisis. The vicious systems and wilful actions that are responsible for today’s planetary catastrophe have spawned an attendant industry of planning—preparedness, scenario planning, emergency management—that directs itself to the future, to anticipation, to fear, to escape. Through a series of arrangements and encounters, Sprout explores the material and metaphorical ways in which connections are possible in a climate of uncertainty—neither wholly optimistic nor utterly despairing, neither propelled by urgency nor foreclosed, but held within their vibrating tensions.
BIOS
Heather Davis is a writer, researcher and teacher whose work draws on feminist and queer theory to examine ecology, materiality, and contemporary art in the context of settler colonialism. She is an assistant professor of Culture and Media at The New School. Her most recent book, Plastic Matter (Duke University Press, 2022), re-examines materiality in light of plastic’s saturation. Davis is also a member of the Synthetic Collective, an interdisciplinary team of scientists, humanities scholars, and artists, who investigate and make visible plastic pollution in the Great Lakes.
Anna Rose Hopkins is a performing artist and chef by trade who plays at the intersection of food, theater and narrative. Her work considers food systems, the Anthropocene, affective labor and hierarchies of service. Her collaborative works have been supported by Swissnex SF, Getty PST:LA/LA the Barbara Seiler Gallery. Film/TV works of note include Dark Night (dir. Tim Sutton), Amos World (dir. Cécile B. Evans), and Gregory Go Boom (dir. Janicza Bravo). Anna Rose is co-founder of Farm2People, bolstering the farm to food bank supply chain; chef and co-owner at Hank and Bean; writer/actor with IAMA Theatre Company.
Media and participatory practice artist Marina Zurkow connects people to nature-culture tensions and environmental messes with humor and affection. Her work has been featured at Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul; Storm King Art Center, New York; the 7th Moscow Biennale; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Sundance Film Festival, Utah; and the Seoul Media City Biennial, Korea, among others. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow and received grants from NYFA, NYSCA, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Creative Capital. She is represented by bitforms gallery and resides in the Hudson Valley, New York.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This is Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland and gathering place for many Indigenous nations and beings. When the unceded earth breathes again, there will be Indigenous lives here, as there are now and have always been. It will still be Lenapehoking. We learn from the bedrock and commit to uplifting, honoring, and listening to those who are seen and unseen, present and future.
ACCESS INFO
The event will feature live transcription. Video of the talk will be posted with captions after the event. Please contact projectspace@efanyc.org if you have specific access needs or requests.
