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Face Nature: Experiments in Trees Madeline Schwartzman Ban The Bridge Club Julie Wills, Annie Strader, Christine Owen and Emily Bivens July 22nd 5 to 7 followed by a potluck dinner. The Re Institute is pleased to present the work of Madeline Schwartsman in the upstairs gallery. Her curious work incorporates performance and site-specific installation. She uses her body as the canvas for these explorations into nature and our place in it. The Bridge Club will use the downstairs space to exhibit a live performance and installation comprised of textural photographical residue.  MADELINE SCHWARTZMAN: Face Nature I think of it as a noun, a verb, and a command. As a noun it describes the work I install on my face and body: experiments in the meeting of human morphology and non-human nature. Skin and plant matter collide and integrate to create a more mutual subjectivity. It’s also a way to playfully explore human futures. The effects of climate change and increased solar radiation—especially as we advance into space—will require us to make alterations to our skin. To make this work I regularly forage on hikes and walks and later dissect, study, and document my collection. I also embed myself in trees, hedges, and bark. I call that facing nature. I promote a more ethical and sustainable approach to coexisting with nature in the Anthropocene and I invite (command) others to do so as well. I am trying to start a movement of environmental integration, touch, respect, and mutuality. Face Nature is site-specific and time-based. The foraged material has a brief life in art, and then it is returned to the forest. I film and photograph by myself, and occasionally with the help of a daughter or neighbor. Performances, photographic portraits, and moving images are often produced without my ability to see.    Click Here to see interview with Madeline Schwartzman The Bridge Club collaborative presents BAN, a live performance and installation that responds to recent legal restrictions that violate human dignity and self-determination. Current state legislation and Supreme Court decisions deny fundamental bodily autonomy, limit access to healthcare, restrict knowledge, and eliminate equal opportunities to vote or pursue education. Using video projection and live action, The Bridge Club incorporates forms of protest, subversion, and witchcraft to conflate the messages of those who wield judgment and the anxious, desperate efforts adopted by those excluded from traditional power roles.  The Bridge Club, Ban  The Bridge Club, Ban  The Bridge Club, Ban About The Bridge Club: The Bridge Club collaborative is artists Christine Owen (Warren, CT), Annie Strader (Crawfordsville, IN), Emily Bivens (Knoxville, TN) and Julie Wills (Baltimore, MD.) Active since 2004, The Bridge Club’s works for performance, video and installation have steadily mined gender roles and social expectation; collective restraints and collective possibility; and alternative power structures. In 2022, following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, The Bridge Club presented CAR WASH, a swimsuit-clad live performance in a parking lot styled as a series of throwbacks to 1973 (the beginning of guaranteed access to safe, legal abortion in the U.S.) Other past works have been presented in a laundromat, a hotel room, a swimming pool and on a city bus, in addition to numerous gallery and museum exhibitions. Learn more at www.thebridgeclub.net The Bridge Club’s photographic work is represented by Deasil (formerly Art Palace Gallery) in Houston, TX. |