In collaboration with Meredith Drum and Grisha Coleman, Mar Sea Sol took place on two Sundays, June 21 and June 28, 4 -7 p.m. in Pelham Bay Park, New York. Meeting at the Salsa Sunday dance event on Orchard Beach, the small group of participants took a walk along the famous beach, engaging in place-centering exercises at points along the way. Discussions about the place immediately before us and overlapping thoughts regarding personal, political and social representations of this location were held in between exercises. We consider correlations to other seaside spots, particularly in the Caribbean. Perceptions of home and holiday; familiar and strange; city and country; belonging and nonconformity were particular points of interest.
Other questions considered:
What impacts of our colonial past are still in motion? Are these histories physically evident in our natural and cultural landscapes? Large bodies of water have surfaces impenetrable to our eyes; the sea can seem unknowable and intractable. Is this what keeps drawing us to it? How does this impact our time at the seaside and our sense of the history of these sites?
Activities included somatic exercises – simple and accessible for all people– to ground participants in body and in place.
-sense mapping: colors (bathing suits, beach toys, birds); sounds (radios, cooking, playing); smells (suntan lotion, salty water, cooking); and skin sensations (temperature, heat, cool, wind, damp, dry).
-en plein air drawing, observing human and non-human life, and the interchange between the two
-body movement mirroring, performing through prescribed scores
-auto-poetic building
Produced by iLAND (Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance)
Documentation by Rachel Stevens, Mitch Miller, and Meredith Drum
