LIVABLE FUTURES: CLIMATE GATHERING is a performance ritual that gives voice to the rage, grief and loss of planetary crisis and offers audiences a charged and charismatic space of connection and transformative dialog.
Small groups of 10-15 are immersed in an interactive installation of sound, light and video activated by the electric, precarious performances of Norah Zuniga Shaw and her extraordinary team of collaborating artists from computer music, dance, and interactive media.
“Your performance found its way into my dream life, disturbing me and demanding that I be open to and commit to an evolving practice of living with the agency I can conjure! Thank you!” December 2019 Participant
In this ongoing installation and series of performance ritual events, the audience is the heart of the work. Long before they enter the space, audiences begin creating the content that will inform and spark the details of the performance. During the event, participants respond and work together to create ritual offerings of sound, text, motion, and discussion that they then take forward with them into their lives.
“Climate Gathering is a spacious, generous way to contend with the magnitudes. !” May 2019 Participant
Read more about the audience experience and see collages created in response the work.
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“Climate change terrifies me, so for too long, I turned away from it. That made me a denier. This project is in part about my own journey into action in the face of insurmountable odds.” ”
CLIMATE GATHERING is a performance initiative of the Livable Futures project and network of community partners, artists, scholars, scientists and activists. The work emerged over a multi-year period of bringing intersectional community groups together to face into the magnitudes of climate crisis and generate transmedia responses.
Keep in touch and follow us on instagram @livablefuturesnow.
Co-Creators
Norah Zuniga Shaw, voice and movement improvisation, intermedia design
Oded Huberman, intermedia design, technical director, interactive sound performance
LROD, Laura Rodriguez, movement improvisation, intermedia design @lrod_work
Tara Burns, movement improvisation @taralovinsugar
Dorian Ham, DJ and “objects of extraction” percussionist Columbus, OH
Byron AuYong, “objects of extraction” percussionist NYC @hearbyron
Michael Morris, Ritual Facilitator Columbus, OH
Tonya Lockyer, Ritual Facilitator NYC and Creative Producer
Marc Ainger, multichannel sound design / custom interactive software design
Antarctic expedition tent, loan from Byrd Polar Research Center. Contributing designer and directors Nadia Lauro, Michelle Ellsworth, Ohad Fishof, Noa Zuk.
Support:
CLIMATE GATHERING was created with support from The Livable Futures project, the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Themes, Coca-Cola Critical Difference for Women Grants, the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, and the Collaboration for Humane Technology and several community partners in Columbus, Ohio including the Champion Intergenerational Center, Flux and Flow Dance Center, and the Byrd Polar Research Center.
Residencies
Responsive to local interests, residencies in each community include intersectional and interfaith
Rituals for Livable Futures community events
#PreparedNotScared emergency preparedness trainings with a creative twist
“Don’t Call Me Resilient” video and dance workshops
Other possibilities are always of interest and are best discovered in conversation with local communities
Climate Gatherings generate locally specific artifacts of intention: text traces from dialogs, sound and image collages that become part of the ongoing community working across time and space for just transitions and livable futures for human and more than human lives on the planet.
Snapshots of 2019 performances and audience participation
Studio photographs by Seth Moses Miller @sethmosesmiller and Snapshots by @studiokin and @lrod_work