Against the Current, 2020
Against the Current was a combination of several video performance installations stretched along one mile of Willamette River shoreline in Portland, Oregon.
Springs investigated water's universal recognition as a healing bringer of life and vitality and by making its reflective properties central to the installation created a fully immersive experience. Viewers had the sense of entering a hidden grove or secret eddy in the stream. Performance artists embodied their generational memories of water's powers.
Yunuen Rhi was specially commissioned to create a healing ritual along the banks of the Tijuana River between Mexico and the United States using flowers, pendulums and swords to invoke a spirit of renewal.
Location/s: East Bank Esplanade, Willamette River, Portland
Sound score by Crystal Cortez
Performers: Yunuen Rhi, Sophia Wright Emigh, Jaleesa Johnston and Sarah Turner, Sarah Brahim and Yaara Valey, Justin Charles Hoover and Linda K Johnson
Media/Details: Six-channel video projection mapping and creative coding installations, found architectural structures, live performance
Created and produced by Mobile Projection Unit
Commissioned by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-based Art Festival, 2020 (TBA:20).
Midway along the route of Against The Current installations viewers encountered Rapids. Combining video recorded in the studio with glitched footage of American waterways using live coding to create a mood of movement and change, Rapids projection mapped video across all three support structures of the Morrison Street Bridge.
Performers: Yaara Valey and Sahra Brahim
To guide visitors through the expanse of the installation, there were two Lantern bearers along the pathway using portable battery powered mini projectors. Images of "Dreamers" that also appear at Springs were projected on the architecture and landscapes between the three major sites.
Performers: Jaleesa Johnston and Sophia Wright Emigh
Lantern Bearers: Kathryn Garcia and Elisa Barrios
Confluence brought together performers with a focus on embodiment and ritual from Portland, Tokyo, and Mexico, and reflected both the turbulence and the poetry that occur when bodies of water and bodies of knowledge converge. Video mapping, live coding and live video feeds, transformed performances recorded live, as well as in the Liminal Performance Space into a phantasmagorical dreamscape. Viewers were also able to use a live camera feed to add their own hand gestures to the installation.
Performers: Yaara Valey (live sound and recorded video performance), Sarah Brahim, Yunuen Rhi, Ela Fala Dance Collective, Kusanagi Sisters, Sophia Wright Emigh and Jaleesa Johnston
