The images in Human Erratics were taken on a digital, medium format Hasselblad in and around the deserted buildings and dumpsites of my hometown. I call these places wastescapes. These wastescape structures conjure images of glacial erratics. Like these large rock deposits, left behind by the movement of ice across long distances, wastescape structures mark the path of human movement. They are, in a sense, human erratics—deposits of human abandonment and remnants of neglect. The images in the film capture the life and death that coexist in these places. They shed light on the movements of our ancestors and reveal how we partner with the spaces that we create, inhabit, and neglect across the landscapes we call home. The film is a collaborative endeavor with artists Tori Lawrence, Ellie Goudie-Averill, and Emily Climer.

​

Screening at the Tabor Arts Galley September 3rd through October 18th 2024. 

​

Film screening at the Hilltown Open Studio Tour on September 30th and October 1st, 2023.

​

______________________________________________________________________________________________

​

​

COLLABORATORS

​

Tori Lawrence is a choreographer, filmmaker, and educator who creates site-specific multimedia performances and dance films. Her recent screendance projects have been filming and hand-processing super 8mm and 16mm analog motion picture film. Her environmentally-based work inspires an imaginative and sustainable way of looking at, thinking about, and using space. She's currently collaborating with San Francisco-based choreographer Sara Shelton Mann on a new performance installation set to premiere in 2021. Tori has been a dance lecturer at Middlebury College, the University of Kansas, and a guest artist at Franklin & Marshall College, Wilson College, Drexel University, and Connecticut College. She’s been awarded residencies and fellowships at Yaddo, Djerassi, Chez Bushwick, Ucross Foundation, Charlotte Street Foundation, Dance Ireland, and Budapest’s Workshop Foundation. Her projects have been funded by New England Foundation for the Arts, Dance Films Association, Vermont Arts Council, and Lighton International Artists Exchange.

​

Originally from the Midwest, Ellie Goudie-Averill is a dance artist and educator who works with dancers of all ages on technique and performance. Since graduating with her MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa, she has served as a professor at Temple University, Bucknell University, the University of Kansas, Franklin & Marshall College, and Connecticut College. In the past, she has danced professionally for Susan Rethorst, Lucinda Childs, Bronwen MacArthur, Group Motion.  Ellie is a regular collaborator and dancer with Tori Lawrence + Co. in dance films and site-specific works and has been with the company for seven years.  She currently teaches at Keene State College and at the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought/Hawley Street Ballet in Northampton, MA.  Ellie's dance reviews and other dance writings have appeared online at thINKingDANCE and BAC Stories.

​

Emily Climer is a dancer and writer based in Brooklyn, NY.  She has recently shown her choreography as part of Sundays on Broadway (NYC), Split Bill at Triskelion Arts (NYC), The Third Barn (PA), and the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought (MA). As a performer, she has worked on projects by Mina Nishimura, Emma Rose Brown, Susan Sgorbati & Elliot Caplan, Tyler Rai, and Tori Lawrence & Co. Emily regularly collaborates with improviser Marie Lynn Haas, as well as teaches Susan Sgorbati's Emergent Improvisation. She is an administrator for Cathy Weis Projects. In addition to her dancing, Emily writes and edits materials for emerging readers as part of the Humanities Team at Great Minds, an education non-profit. She has a BA from Bennington College and an MFA from the University of Iowa.

​

Passepartout Duo is formed by pianist Nicoletta Favari (IT) and percussionist Christopher Salvito (US/IT). 

Drawing from a carefully selected palette of electro-acoustic textures and shapeshifting rhythms, Passepartout Duo’s work investigates the way in which we listen to and connect with sound. Reassessing the tools they use to create their music, the group is continually developing a specialized and evolving ecosystem of handmade musical instruments that have ranged from analog electronic circuits and conventional percussion, to room-size textile installations and found objects. Splintered Landscapes, the music featured in Human Erratics, is a series of sonic artworks in the form of deconstructed and reassembled cassette tapes. Taking influence from the Japanese ceramic technique and philosophy of Kintsugi, field recordings conducted on site are transferred to magnetic tape, then meticulously cut into myriads of random fragments. These fragments are read by using an expressly built tape reading device that helps to identify each piece and to create a compositional sense between the splices.

​

​

film stills by Tori Lawrence