Jan.2 saw a fabulous article about a fabulous artist, Michelle Ellsworth who was here at OSU for a week this fall as one of our guest artists for humane technologies performance research. I suggest this article as a great read for anyone needing to feel better in this new year and to find ways as Seth Godin says to "stretch in whatever we do to be artists, to create in ways that matter to other people." Michelle's work makes me feel like there really might be something I CAN do as a dancer, an improviser, an artist, teacher, human: "Like many people over the past year or so, Michelle Ellsworth has often felt disoriented, as if the world had been turned upside down. But she is probably the only person who responded to that feeling by putting herself in a wooden wheel so that she can be rotated 360 degrees around the axis of her nose." Michelle was an incredibly galvanizing presence, cutting through all the mishmash with humor and her own electric presence. We are still enjoying the catalyzing effects and her directing changed the pathway of our performance research projects in powerful ways. Because of her directing, the piece we are creating with the laptop orchestra has become an overt expression of the precarity we are experiencing with the impacts of climate change in our lives. Stay tuned for more on that piece "A Lecture on Climate Change."
Read the full New York Time article