Whittled down from hundreds of entries, ten interactive and experiential art installations are coming to Austin for SXSW, including a performance and sculpture from 2019 UT Austin MFA graduate Ariel René Jackson and current Theatre & Dance MFA candidate Michael J. Love.
Working across sculpture, video, and performance, Jackson explores land as a site of negotiation, bearing vestiges of slavery and colonialism as well as offering the potential for recovery, restoration, and growth. The Future Is A Constant Wake (2019) centers soil as tools to access knowledge from the past in preparation for the future. The opening line speculates on all that could be borne from sustained engagement with the important work of ancestors. Developed in collaboration with choreographer Michael J. Love, the video proposes a somatic way of forging connection with the past through touch and movement. Through this process, Jackson argues that "palimpsests of previous systems will be a guide to seeing ourselves released" and move us to "futures that our bodies will inhabit, again." Jackson reminds us that the English word remember contains the word member, shorthand for a person, animal, plant, or limb that is a part of a complex structure. Etymologically, the Latin roots of remember and member reinscribe a mind-body divide–remember is derived from memor, meaning to be mindful, while member comes from membrum, or body part–a distinction that Jackson makes a powerful case for reworking. Only then, she argues, can the material legacies of the past be fully reckoned with bringing us to a "point past pain and just upon bliss."
Most recently, Jackson's video work was on view in the New Museum's Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists organized by Sara O’Keeffe, Associate Curator. The SXSW 2020 Art Program installation and performance is a continuation of Jackson's productive collaboration with Michael J. Love, UT Austin MFA candidate in Performance as Public Practice, which began with an initial performance that took place during Jackson's master's thesis exhibition shown in the above image.
The Future Is A Constant Wake will take place on March 13, 2020 at the JW Marriott, Room 404. On view for badge holders.