Weather Model

Musiqa Houston commissioned composer Sam Wu and I to make a new work together. Sam created a new work for string quartet and voice performed by:
Jillian Krempasky, mezzo-soprano
Mary Grace Johnson, violin
Nanki Chugh, violin
Molly Wise, viola
Chris Ellis, cello

Wu composed a score that underscores the spatial and elemental nature of the subject matter, with an original sung text we developed in collaboration and inspired by early language development. I installed a moving video sculpture that plays with viewers’ relationship to horizon line, distance, and point of view.
You can read or hear press about our collaborative process.

From 2017-2021 I experimented with renegotiating Houstonians’ relationship to water post-Hurricane Harvey and in the face of Climate Change. This work, Washing Water, included gathering footage of Houstonians creating their own symbolic weather events staged and videoed at small scale, and simultaneously projected large at communal gatherings. Weather Model projected video of waterscapes made by Mekeva Mcneil, Zachary Schulte, Saxton Fisher, Claudia Villaroel and Kate, Anthony Almendarez, and T Lavois Theibaud at the height they were made, some years later. I collaged the personal hand bath scale videos I facilitated with massive digital weather mapping models that inspire Sam, from https://earth.nullschool.net and tropicaltidbits.com.

The performance ran for 2 nights. Each time the screen choreography repeated after Sam’s composition and the audience was invited to leave their seat/fixed pov and become interactants on the stage/floor of the black box theatre.

L: the installation videoed by Ronald L. Jones R: the performance videoed by Full Media Jacket

The original video I made was projected onto the moving screen and choreographed to Sam’s music. We call this “the music video.”