Dig, an excerpt of a video documenting the creation of a 500' land art, is located at a section of the Patuxent River managed by a dam. When the dam reopens, the artwork will be submerged like many Mid-Atlantic prehistoric petrogyphs that were destroyed for hydroelectric projects. By exploring the interdependence between humanity and nature, this performance art and earthwork focus on impermanence.
Timelapse clip with sound (2:41) of the 8 minute video projection
Timelapse clip with sound (2:41) of the 8 minute video projection
I.
I dig because I am the earth the heavy red clay the rain sodden, combed vegetation that creeps through valleys. I catch wind on my tongue and wrestle with tree limbs like brothers under a harvest moon. I cradle the barred owl and thirst for whitewater caught between eddies.
I wake rise set two feet pray: show me
rinse, wrap, sip and swish
ritual like an obedient servant.
offering full deliverance of my body,
Calloused hands, blistered by inheritance
Sheltering bruises that remind me: elasticity has no place in a Colonial river gate
I bear the toll:
Invisible tallies of every word, position, action I’ve done wrong
I’ve done wrong
So I pierce my skin, puncturing the suppleness of God’s perfection the layers getting more fine as I press through grass wisps to crack surfaces revealing numb striations, nature’s hidden palette boasting hematite and quartz abstraction four inches below
I dig
I dig through wild vine’s battlement, absorbing rolling acreage of words
But three weigh heavier and permeate crust, sinking, accumulating,
morphing into stones
I pick those out by hand, like gravel in a skinned knee,
Place them on a white linen tarp and drag them as far as my hips and aching back
Will take them: to the river’s bed
Then twist, shake the sheet, and repeat.
Two three four hours pass I can tell by my shadow’s sun dial
My position marked only by footprints, persistence through pressed undergrowth that a shadow once existed there, a physical echo of space
I dig through dawn’s mist rising, caught between warm waters and cooler air,
Memory smelling green like morning maple, once
Chewed evaporation spewing cotton white nostalgia
on summer's skunk cabbage plumes, elusive Sweetness
suspended defiant grasping
branches that simply fade into
Vacant sky lots
I dig more steps until the mountains lean in and swallow me with weight, orthogonals pinning my image against the grain of a vanishing point until
I, too,
Disappear.
I dig because I am the earth the heavy red clay the rain sodden, combed vegetation that creeps through valleys. I catch wind on my tongue and wrestle with tree limbs like brothers under a harvest moon. I cradle the barred owl and thirst for whitewater caught between eddies.
I wake rise set two feet pray: show me
rinse, wrap, sip and swish
ritual like an obedient servant.
offering full deliverance of my body,
Calloused hands, blistered by inheritance
Sheltering bruises that remind me: elasticity has no place in a Colonial river gate
I bear the toll:
Invisible tallies of every word, position, action I’ve done wrong
I’ve done wrong
So I pierce my skin, puncturing the suppleness of God’s perfection the layers getting more fine as I press through grass wisps to crack surfaces revealing numb striations, nature’s hidden palette boasting hematite and quartz abstraction four inches below
I dig
I dig through wild vine’s battlement, absorbing rolling acreage of words
But three weigh heavier and permeate crust, sinking, accumulating,
morphing into stones
I pick those out by hand, like gravel in a skinned knee,
Place them on a white linen tarp and drag them as far as my hips and aching back
Will take them: to the river’s bed
Then twist, shake the sheet, and repeat.
Two three four hours pass I can tell by my shadow’s sun dial
My position marked only by footprints, persistence through pressed undergrowth that a shadow once existed there, a physical echo of space
I dig through dawn’s mist rising, caught between warm waters and cooler air,
Memory smelling green like morning maple, once
Chewed evaporation spewing cotton white nostalgia
on summer's skunk cabbage plumes, elusive Sweetness
suspended defiant grasping
branches that simply fade into
Vacant sky lots
I dig more steps until the mountains lean in and swallow me with weight, orthogonals pinning my image against the grain of a vanishing point until
I, too,
Disappear.