Traveling in Place, 2017
The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Traveling in Place is an improvisational performance and installation work created and performed by Megan Craig and Rachel Bernsen for the Yale University Art Gallery in 2017 in conjunction with the exhibit Small-Great Objects: Anni and Josef Albers in the Americas. Based on ideas about localized customs and micro-movements, weaving, fabric as architecture, and communicative patterns, Traveling in Place involves chance rotations and interactions between Bernsen and Craig as they move in and between three demarcated floor spaces, each with its own set of material and dynamic characteristics. The performance entails entanglement and experimentation with thread, wheels, fabric, and wearable sculpture. A 30-minute sound score created by Nick Lloyd and Megan Craig accompanies the work. Photographs by Stephanie Anestis.
The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Traveling in Place is an improvisational performance and installation work created and performed by Megan Craig and Rachel Bernsen for the Yale University Art Gallery in 2017 in conjunction with the exhibit Small-Great Objects: Anni and Josef Albers in the Americas. Based on ideas about localized customs and micro-movements, weaving, fabric as architecture, and communicative patterns, Traveling in Place involves chance rotations and interactions between Bernsen and Craig as they move in and between three demarcated floor spaces, each with its own set of material and dynamic characteristics. The performance entails entanglement and experimentation with thread, wheels, fabric, and wearable sculpture. A 30-minute sound score created by Nick Lloyd and Megan Craig accompanies the work. Photographs by Stephanie Anestis.
Colorada, 2015
Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim, Neuenhaus, Germany
Colorada is the fourth in a series of collaborations between dance artist Rachel Bernsen and visual artist Megan Craig. The Spanish word “colorada” expresses redness, an act of coloring, dying or painting, blushing, or the deepening of a ruddy hue. It indicates a slippage between process and product, underscoring the irresolvable verbal and nominal nature of color and color experience. Evolving from a series of conversations about color, ambiguity, and emotion, Colorada is a performance and installation piece featuring both Bernsen and Craig that employs movement, assemblage, and collage to explore the fluidity and psychophysical/material dimensionality of reddening and the color red. Colorada was performed at the opening of Craig's solo show, Rose Sings, in Germany on May 31. Music and sound collage by Nick Lloyd, voice by Cora Lloyd and Maria Winther.
Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim, Neuenhaus, Germany
Colorada is the fourth in a series of collaborations between dance artist Rachel Bernsen and visual artist Megan Craig. The Spanish word “colorada” expresses redness, an act of coloring, dying or painting, blushing, or the deepening of a ruddy hue. It indicates a slippage between process and product, underscoring the irresolvable verbal and nominal nature of color and color experience. Evolving from a series of conversations about color, ambiguity, and emotion, Colorada is a performance and installation piece featuring both Bernsen and Craig that employs movement, assemblage, and collage to explore the fluidity and psychophysical/material dimensionality of reddening and the color red. Colorada was performed at the opening of Craig's solo show, Rose Sings, in Germany on May 31. Music and sound collage by Nick Lloyd, voice by Cora Lloyd and Maria Winther.
net work (please touch), 2014
New Haven City Wide Open Studios, October 2014.
net work (please touch) was commissioned by Artspace for the 2014 City Wide Open Studios at Erector Square and consists of a 3 parts: 1) a site-specific installation, 2) community participation in manipulating the installation to build a temporary, mesh environment, and 3) a performance in the midst of this enviroment featuring Rachel Bernsen and Pamela Newell, with sound by Nick Lloyd. net work (please touch) explores the possibilities for contact and intimacy between friends and strangers. We have been thinking broadly about the generation of networks both ancient and contemporary: nets hand woven or tied for fishing or other practical ends, netted veils, tapestries, networks of rivers and roads, root systems, spinal chords and nervous systems, bird nests, beaver dams, constellations, family trees, animal packs, villages, electronic circuitry, and virtual networks enabled through social media. We have also talked at length about what it means to connect, about the differences between actual and virtual connections, and about the relationship between connection and physical contact. One of the questions we are interested in exploring is whether it is possible to collectively build a network that might persist or have consequences for connectivity beyond our piece. We are curious to see what happens and what new questions emerge when you collaborate with us. We invite you to touch the materials and to meet as you build together. The work requires your physical interaction and relies upon the cooperation and creativity of a community that coheres in the space of the work. In this way, net work (please touch) responds to the festive and celebratory character of City Wide Open Studios, tapping your energy in the service of building a participatory, malleable, monument to creative community.
New Haven City Wide Open Studios, October 2014.
net work (please touch) was commissioned by Artspace for the 2014 City Wide Open Studios at Erector Square and consists of a 3 parts: 1) a site-specific installation, 2) community participation in manipulating the installation to build a temporary, mesh environment, and 3) a performance in the midst of this enviroment featuring Rachel Bernsen and Pamela Newell, with sound by Nick Lloyd. net work (please touch) explores the possibilities for contact and intimacy between friends and strangers. We have been thinking broadly about the generation of networks both ancient and contemporary: nets hand woven or tied for fishing or other practical ends, netted veils, tapestries, networks of rivers and roads, root systems, spinal chords and nervous systems, bird nests, beaver dams, constellations, family trees, animal packs, villages, electronic circuitry, and virtual networks enabled through social media. We have also talked at length about what it means to connect, about the differences between actual and virtual connections, and about the relationship between connection and physical contact. One of the questions we are interested in exploring is whether it is possible to collectively build a network that might persist or have consequences for connectivity beyond our piece. We are curious to see what happens and what new questions emerge when you collaborate with us. We invite you to touch the materials and to meet as you build together. The work requires your physical interaction and relies upon the cooperation and creativity of a community that coheres in the space of the work. In this way, net work (please touch) responds to the festive and celebratory character of City Wide Open Studios, tapping your energy in the service of building a participatory, malleable, monument to creative community.
Bound, 2013
The Big Room, New Haven, CT.
Bound is a piece about communication, its limits and failures. We conceived the piece as an enactment of a very basic set of rules, each of which triggered a specific response. When we started working on this piece, I was thinking about the opening sections of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, in which he envisions two builders communicating with each other with a very limited vocabulary: "Block. Pillar. Beam." We wanted to experiment with this kind of primitive language game to see what tensions and relationships might arise out of such minimal means. I had a strong visual idea for this piece that entailed a limited palette and rudimentary materials: string, cardboard, canvas, tape. As Rachel and I worked together, we edited the objects and settled on masking tape, in part because of its sonic dimension. We performed this piece (alongside another rendition of Stack) at The Big Room in May of 2013. Below is an excerpt from the middle of the performance.
The Big Room, New Haven, CT.
Bound is a piece about communication, its limits and failures. We conceived the piece as an enactment of a very basic set of rules, each of which triggered a specific response. When we started working on this piece, I was thinking about the opening sections of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, in which he envisions two builders communicating with each other with a very limited vocabulary: "Block. Pillar. Beam." We wanted to experiment with this kind of primitive language game to see what tensions and relationships might arise out of such minimal means. I had a strong visual idea for this piece that entailed a limited palette and rudimentary materials: string, cardboard, canvas, tape. As Rachel and I worked together, we edited the objects and settled on masking tape, in part because of its sonic dimension. We performed this piece (alongside another rendition of Stack) at The Big Room in May of 2013. Below is an excerpt from the middle of the performance.
Stack, 2012
New Haven City Wide Open Studios.
Stack is a work about the relationship between paint and bodies, the possibilities of stacking movements, and the different evolutionary speeds of various materials. The piece was conceived in three movements, beginning with a linear, mapping section that reflects the initial marks a painter might make on a canvas. Rachel first performed our piece as part of New Haven City Wide Open Studios in my studio in the fall of 2012. Taylor Ho Bynum played cornet. Below is a 2 minute clip from the beginning of the performance.
New Haven City Wide Open Studios.
Stack is a work about the relationship between paint and bodies, the possibilities of stacking movements, and the different evolutionary speeds of various materials. The piece was conceived in three movements, beginning with a linear, mapping section that reflects the initial marks a painter might make on a canvas. Rachel first performed our piece as part of New Haven City Wide Open Studios in my studio in the fall of 2012. Taylor Ho Bynum played cornet. Below is a 2 minute clip from the beginning of the performance.