Towards Pigeonology

multimedia, practice-based research project with artist Laura Hyunjhee Kim.

2022 - 2023

Towards Pigeonology is a multimedia performance project developed by Kevin Sweet and Laura Hyunjhee Kim. Their performances, workshops and performance lectures serve as a speculative methodology that disorients and reconfigures popular representations of (non)human entities as a means to recognize their inseparable role as active participants and witness to anthropocentric narratives.

Iterations of this practice-based research project has been presented in exhibitions and academic conferences. Exhibitions include Flocks as Emergent Turn in Narrative at Udstillingsstedet M.I.S., Jutland Art Academy, Aarhus, Denmark (01.21-02.02.2022); Martha: A Pigeonological Study for an Endling at Matters of Lives, Meta Forte, Venice, Italy (09.03-09.28.2022), and Matter of Pigeons at Future Forging: Mythos of the Cybernaut, CU Denver Experience Gallery, Denver, Colorado, USA (09.17-10.31.2022). We have presented our work at "The Art and Science of Species Revival Symposum" at the Leverhulme Center for Anthropocene Biodiversity, The University of York, UK (12.14.2022) and in the panel Hybridity and Praxis: The Artist as Researcher at the 111th College Art Association annual conference, New York, USA (02.16.2023).

• "Flocks as Emergent Turn in Narrative" performance lecture
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La Sierra

community-based immersive media project (VR site with embedded oral histories) in collaboration with artist Sarah McCormick, activist Shirley Romero Otero and members of the Land Rights Council (San Luis), and the Move Mountains youth leadership program.

2019 - 2023 (ongoing)

For 60 years, a community of predominantly Chicano/Chicana families in Costilla County, Colorado, have fought for their ancestral rights to the access and resources of an 83,000-acre mountain tract known as ‘La Sierra.’ Originally part of the Sangre de Cristo land grant, this community relied on the inherited, communal resources of La Sierra for generations. In 1960, they were fenced out of their land and cultural inheritance when their rights were illegally removed through a Torrens Title action in U.S. District Court. Though limited access has been assured through decisions made by the Colorado Supreme Court, restrictive actions by the current owner and management of the land have been characterized as abuse and oppression.

Developed with activist Shirley Romero Otera and members of the Land Rights Council of San Luis, the goal for this project is to support the community of heirs in their continuing intergenerational fight for fair access to the land. Through photogrammetric imaging, virtual reality design, and workshops in creative media production, La Sierra engages young members of the community in the process of becoming the authors and holders of their families' histories and the critical importance of the land while transforming the tools that have been used against them into tools of resistance.

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Finding Hope in Endling Things

single-channel video & sound
[caution: contains flashing visual patterns]

dur 17:18 / 2022
Blind Willow Sleeping Woman Colorado Premiere & Preshow Program (04.23.2023 - 04.27.2023)
Sie Film Center, Denver, CO

Finding Hope invites you to read stories into sound and motion. Abstract loops of computerless images are generated live through signal interruptions and then stretched, twisted, and bent into new and unexpected forms. The piece relies on three unstable systems to achieve these deformations: a video loop, signal loop, and a circuit-bent video mixer. The sound and image were improvized live by the artist, and the piece is presented in the form of a video recorded from the screen of a CRT monitor used in its production. The piece was screened as preshow programming for the Colorado premiere of Pierre Földes' Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2022), curated by Sharifa Lafon.

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Brigid of Murroe: A Wonder Tale

single-channel video with artist Sheila Gallagher
and poet Fanny Howe

dur 07:57 / 2015

In the childhood of the world, Brigid learned to read from the shapes of leaves and stones, rushing water, lily pads and twigs. She smeared dyes on her finger from lupin, bluebells and violet. Then wet them with a drop of dew into loops and circles. She saw eyes in everything, and eternity in the lives of bees and songbirds. Brigid of Murroe tell the story of the goddess, then person, then patron saint of Ireland.

selected screenings

• Grace Farms, New Canaan, CT (10.17.15)
• "Be Again," the Woodbury Poetry Room, MA (03.12.15)
• "Brigid of Murroe," BCSR, CA (04.09.15)

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A Meditation on Adorno and Benjamin

single-channel video & talk with Bo-Mi Choi

dur 05:05 / 2013
"Rethinking Amity"
Villanova University, Chicago, IL

"Only when the horror of annihilation is raised fully into consciousness are we placed in the proper relationship to the dead: the unity with them, since we, like them, are victims of the same condition and of the same disappointed hope (Adorno)." A Meditation is a reperformance of the correspondence between between Theodore Adorno and Walter Benjamin on the topics of mourning and melancholy.

Tired of Speaking Sweetly

single-channel video with Sheila Gallagher

dur 1:10 / 2013
"Ravishing Far-Near"
DODGE Gallery, NY

"Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly / And wants to rip to shreds / All your erroneous notions of truth / That make you fight within yourself, dear one / And with others / Causing the world to weep / On too many fine days" (Hafiz). Tired of Speaking Sweetly is a collaboration with artist Sheila Gallagher, created for her exhibition "Ravishing Far/Near."

Time-Line

interactive projection installations & and public workshops

dur April 16 - 21, 2013
"Time-Line" curated by Stephanie Cardon
Brant Gallery, Boston, MA

Time-Line was a participatory exhibition consisting of multi-projector loops, talks, and workshops reflecting on the nature of light and time. During operational hours, the artist was present for drop-in visits, questions, and collaborative improvisations in image-making.

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Intervals

3x16mm projection installation series

dur 144:00:00 / April 24 - May 3, 2012
"MassArt MFA Thesis Show"
Paine & Bakalar Gallery, Boston, MA

Intervals is a series of 16mm film loop installations in which the inherent mechanical flaws of film projectors become a form of generative choreography. Over time, the three independently projected color channels will phase in their synchronization. With a length of 215 frames per loop and the wear of the machine on the material each cycle, approximately every nine seconds there will be a new cinematic experience; a new image comprised of cyan yellow and magenta imagery, breaking and reconstituting before the viewer. The series is meant to be a process of reflection, a way to address questions of materiality, repetition and chance.

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