Artists Statement
Performance, June 15, CCCB Auditorium, Public Event
Keywords: piano, multimedia, interactive, climate, migration
ICE IS WATER IS ICE IS is a multimedia performance for piano, multi-channel sound, and interactive video. It is inspired by the emigration of Nordic peoples to Canada in the 1880s due to economic depression and war, and the current impact on climate change representing water in all its forms.
In considering various questions embodying the possible, we find resonance. “How to fight climate crisis and global warming?” Performance of this work serves as a time-based contemplation. It provides a space to consider how to slow, stabilize, or even reverse the effects of human behavior on climate conditions and the consequences. As the work represents shifting states of water and the language we use to name natural phenomena, we are asked to consider the interdependence of our actions to the conditions of nature as nature ourselves.
How might we relate with nature in order to transform our world so as to support continuance of its inhabitability? In relation to the witnessed realities of climate change, foregrounding “the possible unfinished real in front of us” as distinct from fostering ingrained doubt or disbelief, the work encourages the perception of current environmental challenges through rigorously focused consciousness, awareness, and iconography. Put more directly: if we don’t change we will perish; if we don’t pay attention, we’re doomed!
Considering our current circumstances,the possibleoffers an opportunity to cultivate an understanding of data-driven scientific approaches only if we sensitize ourselves to the consequences. Forced human migration, plant and animal displacement, extinction, and cultural collapse are realities we face. Data and persuasive writing may inspire intellectual engagement and artistic production, or else, at the other end of the spectrum, bring into question what many (most?) witness and experience to be normative.
The creation and performance of this work foregrounds both aesthetic and lived observation with an openness to experiential understanding. It attempts to untether us from strictly data-driven arguments, from stubborn political and contrarian opining, from self-defeating impossibility thinking, to a positive possible we can embrace.
https://genegort.com/video/IceIs.html
- Ken Steen, Gene Gort & Megumi Masaki create and perform as multimedia chamber ensemble: Slingshot Trio, with featured performances in such diverse locations as Reykjavík, Iceland; Brandon, Manitoba, Canada; Belfast, Northern Ireland; and NYC, USA.
- Ken Steen’s (USA) music and sound art are recognized internationally for their authentic vitality, remarkable range, and distinctive personal vision. Whether acoustic, electronic or some multimedia combination, Steen’s multifarious works feature sumptuous textures of gradual yet unpredictable evolution. https://www.hartford.edu/directory/hartt/steen-ken.aspx
- Gene Gort (USA) is a visual artist, video producer, and media programmer. Primarily working in moving image media, he incorporates video, digital imaging, and sound in installations, fixed media and new media performances. https://genegort.com
- Megumi Masaki (Japanese-Canadian) has been active as a pianist, multimedia artist, educator, conductor and curator. Her innovative performances have earned her a reputation as a leading interpreter of new music and multimedia works. Megumi specializes in exploring how sound, image, text and movement can be integrated and interactive in multimedia works. https://www.megumimasaki.com