( about )
wind chime festivals
~
"We have a tendency to think of Earth as a closed system. It is not. We do
not live in a sealed spacecraft, isolated from the environment in a
convenient bubble of air. We travel rapidly through space and time with
our windows open, constantly exposed to the complex ecology of the galaxy
and all it contains. We are windblown. And, while one of the consequences
of this openness may be bouts of influenza, another could be the very
existence of life itself."
— Lyall Watson, Heaven's Breath: A Natural History of
the Wind (1984)
~
The Wind Chime Festival is in two parts:
[ part 1 — virtual ]
Eleven artists from across the globe were invited to create a wind chime. We sent each artist a web camera so that each chime could be live-streamed to our website. The chimes could be experienced simultaneously on the site, swaying and ringing
in chorus with one another even though they are many thousands of miles apart. —
more info
[ part 2 - irl ]
For the in-person festival, artists of all mediums were invited via an open call to create their own wind chime. These chimes were installed by participants in the Vale of Cashmere, Prospect Park, NYC for a one-day event on Saturday, May 21, 2022
—
more info
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Who organized the wind chime festival?
The festival was organized by us —
Laurel Schwulst and
Ellie Hunter.
How did the wind chime festival come about?
We are both artists who came together through a
joint interest in art in the public realm, and the importance of providing opportunities for participation in the
civic commons that aren’t always governed by institutions that require big budgets and lengthy bureaucratic processes.
Moreover, we
were interested in the concept of wind as a connective tissue, and the wind chime as an object that makes us acutely
aware of our interdependence.
Is it possible for an artwork to reshape the fear and bias we have developed over the
last two pandemic years towards the idea of being interconnected? How can we embrace co-presence, shared affect, and forces of nature that move between us and bind us in a way that is celebratory, creative, or poetic??
( ^ )