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EDWARD DORMER |
Reception and Talk:
Saturday, September 6, 3 pm with Elyse Gonzales, Assistant Curator, ICA,
Philadelphia Dennis Burton, Director of Land Restoration, The Schuylkill
Center for Environmental Education Edward Dormer
As part of InFiltration, InLiquid has invited Philadelphia artist Edward Dormer to realize an environmental installation on the grounds of The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education The center will host a lecture and day hike to the site of the installation on September 6 at 3pm with talk by Elyse Gonzales, assistant curator, Institute of Contemporary Art; Dennis Burton, Director of Land Restoration, The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education; and artist Ed Dormer. The reception and lecture are free and open to the public. (For directions, visit: http://www.schuylkillcenter.org/resources/directions.htm )
About the Installation
CUT HERE: Instruction, Command, Option is an installation on
the grounds of The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. Walking
along the winding paths of the 500-acre preserve, fluorescent pink begins
to emerge through the dense woods. Distant dashes thin and deliberate,
mark a two-acre tract of land. Individual trees emerge with surveyor's
ribbon wrapped around their trunks. Collectively, the ribbons form a horizontal
plane bisecting the forest and thus emphasize the shifting topography.
The site appears as a tract of land slated for development. Clearly marked
and unapologetic, CUT HERE: Instruction, Command, Option ideologically
confronts suburban and urban expansion. It takes on the point of development
before design processes begin – before commercial and residential
development, new road construction, or new public space allocation. Ecological
preservation/restoration and the human-needs perspective are in dialectic
opposition.
About the Artist
Edward Dormer’s installations are seen in the
US and Europe. Chosen locations are often dynamic and loaded with subtext.
US sites range from an uncontrollable anthracite mine-fire in Centralia
Pennsylvania to the Delaware River flowing past Philadelphia’s wasted
industrial piers. In Europe, sites include a tomb-tower on the French
Riviera, Teutonic Castle in North Poland, and an abandoned military base
in Potsdam, Germany. They serve as both physical infrastructures and historic
research centers that shape the context for each installation. Work manifested
in both indoor and outdoor sites share common threads questioning our
physical placement, and our interpretations of history within a contemporary
political framework.