A Visitor’s Guide to Reorientation on Spectacle Island 2016
Film by Sue Murad. 20 minutes
Performance by Maria Molteni and Hermione Spriggs
A Visitor’s Guide to Reorientation on Spectacle Island invites arrivals into a disorienting topography where mythic, birdlike Sirens embody the island's instability and simultaneously offer instructive, way-finding remedies.
The film is created from a live work, They were Sunbeams... Navigating the Inner Ear - A Walking Map for Reorientation on Spectacle Island, by Maria Molteni and Hermione Spriggs. Molteni and Spriggs invite visitors to arrive on Spectacle Island willing to participate in a day of way-finding and sensory reorientation. Conducting both dizzying and remedial movements of the body, they re-trace the island's history and topography via a navigation of the inner ear's cochlea. Addressing relationships to collective sea-sickness, vertigo and alarm-reception, the duo adopt the nebulous identity of archetypal Sirens. Masked as Red-Winged Blackbirds, in response to the theory of the *Bird Termination* by which mythological Sirens are considered distasteful commoners and transformed into fledglings, the artists provoke the public to join in ritual protests of disruption, awakening and healing.
Location: Time Body Space Objects 4 at Spectacle Island curated by Vela Phalen and Alice Vogler. Part of the Boston Isle Arts Initiative.
Performance + Film Series: Films created from works of performance, live action, and installation with invitation from the artists, in a spirit of collaboration.