A Short Play for Changing Tides performed three times in a loop
The water has rushed in!
We who have been held down have been reborn!
Life has been brought in and cared for by radioactive waves.
These fools bob for life!
But we, we bare it!
Praise the seekers and doers!
The shifting of tides!
Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
45 minute duration, June 29th 2017
San Diego, CA. Documentation by Amy Reid
In 1898 Polish scientist Dr. Maire Curie discovered radium. Through her research and developments of Xray technologies and experiments with radium, Curie saved countless lives. Within her lifetime she was awarded 2 noble prizes, but was also subject to many constructed set backs.
In 'A Short Play for Changing Tides' we find aesthetics of radium that are mixed with rave and protest; a layering of metaphors found through subversions of hierarchal forms of power.
Here we find Goddess Curie in her laboratory along with her unseen but present assistants. Radiation becomes a metaphor which communicates the penetrative abilities of what Bell Hook’s has coined the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. In the background we see Jennifer Steinkamp's seven channel synchronized projection Entitled Madame Curie, 2011. Forty different plants mentioned in Curie's biography written by her daughter were digitally rendered for the projection including chestnut blooms, marsh marigolds, may flower, and hop plants.