THE MINERALOGY OF OBJECTS, 2015
Created by Laurie Berg in collaboration with Jodi Bender, Bessie McDonough-Thayer and Jillian Sweeney
Original Sound by Karl Scholz
Laurie Berg brings her latest work, The Mineralogy of Objects, out of the theater and onto the beach! Translating Variétés de Minéralogie Object (1939), a shadow box by artist Joseph Cornell, into a collective, kinetic exercise, The Mineralogy of Objects finds inspiration in Cornell’s repetition and transformation of a female silhouette. Berg works with her collection of objects and props, and the driving, visceral effects of a baseline beat, to create a space that is both highly structured and simultaneously fantastical. Created by Laurie Berg in collaboration with Jodi Bender, Bessie McDonough-Thayer and Jillian Sweeney. Original Sound by Karl Scholz. The Mineralogy of Objects premiered at Danspace Project in 2015.
Photography by David Brandon Geeting for Beach Sessions Dance Series
About the Artist:
Laurie Berg makes work in a variety of forms including dance and performance, collage, and jewelry. With an ongoing interest in iconography, honed absurdity and sharp, sometimes dark humor, Berg draws out a multiplicity of meanings and associations from her subject matter to create a living collage. Berg is also a co-organizer of AUNTS, a roving event platform guided by core principles of collectivity, cooperation and sharing. Most recently her work was presented at Danspace Project and as part of the Joyce UNLEASHED Series at the Invisible Dog Art Center. She is the 2016 recipient of “The Tommy” Award, was a 2013 New York Live Arts Studio Series Resident Artist and a 2010-2012 Movement Research Artist-In-Residence. Her jewelry, which plays with the juxtaposition of real and fake, new and old, precious and plastic, can be seen around the necks of many dance artists in NYC.
Funding Credits: The creation of The Mineralogy of Objects was made possible, in part, by the Danspace Project 2014-15 Commissioning Initiative, with Support from the Jerome Foundation and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation’s Late-Stage Production Stipend. Additional support was received from a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
This photo series was commissioned through Beach Sessions' Dance x Air program, which is a collaborative project between presenting artists and photographers of distinction using untapped resources in Rockaway to create original visual content.