Waynesboro, Spring 2023

We are participants here in this on-going process of body mapping and place making. We move through and into space, always affecting the texture of the ground beneath our feet, even if imperceivable. Our bodies can move rocks around the room like wind shifts a layer of sand or water dislodges a log, unstuck. Our hands and weight compress the wool into felt like a mountain slouches, like a parade of tires hard packs snow. Lift up the time scales and we can see we are agents of change. Tactile, tangible, and sedimentary particles marching, mounding, moving, and collapsing. But how does it all feel, to touch and be touched? 

In the spirit of place-based and improvisational movement practice, our collective activates found rock, sculpture, and textile installations to bring the audience deeper into the themes of On Felt and Feral Grounds, a multi-modal show by Taylor Hanigosky that was recently exhibited at the Shenandoah Valley Art Center in Waynesboro, VA. We built the work through collaborative ritual, open and improvisational play, shared and rotating methodologies (including “Laban-Bartenieff” movement study, “Moment Work” devised theatre techniques, and several others), and especially sensorial interaction and receptiveness with specific materials such as wool, sand, and stone, which brings us into direct sense of participation with place. Taylor’s felted works are also highly informed by the land that she tends and all the beings that live there and mark the world with their doings.