Exhibition Description
Stelo Arts
May 28th - June 20th | 12PM - 5PM, Wednesday - Saturday
Field Studies (Symbiosis) looks at forest ecology from a variety of perspectives, beginning with an aerial overview of the Canadian Boreal Forest and moving through the dynamic processes that shape the landscape, including wind, water, pollination and the hidden forest communication channels of the micro-rhizomes in the soil. Three multidisciplinary artists collaborated over nine months and completed a weeklong residency at PEM to produce this 30-minute performance-based installation. Their project engaged the natural world through deep investigations of the land, siting filming in the wild and collaborating with natural scientists.
Artist Fernanda D’Agostino’s monumental projections activate the front wall and stage of the auditorium. Composer Lisa DeGrace’s soundtrack interweaves immersive sounds from nature and beyond. A live performance by movement artist Laura Kathrein intertwines movement, sound, images and the forest’s unseen worlds to create an embodied field study that gives voice to the forest itself. In this symbiotic exchange, Field Studies translates hidden languages and opens onto the possibility of a world where all living beings are recognized as our sacred relations.
Public Programs:
First Thursday, June 4th | 5PM - 8PM
About The Collaborators
Fernanda D’Agostino
Fernanda D’Agostino’s internationally exhibited installations incorporate sculpture, architecture, interactive video, projection mapping and sound in novel ways. Her work engages themes of movement and growth as catalyzed by phenomena of the natural world, alchemical transformation, complex networks, and human engagement with non-human communities. Having begun her career in the 1980s as a performance artist with a focus on body work, the body and how it engages with space and objects informs all her work. Although no longer performing herself, every installation includes a performance or other live event, and often the making of the work involves performative acts by collaborators. The connecting thread in all her work is placing viewers at the center of an all-encompassing interactive environment, in this sense the viewer becomes the performer in a “prepared environment.”
D'Agostino is the recipient of a Bronson Fellowship, Flintridge Foundation Fellowship, and Project Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Precipice Fund and Ford Family Foundation. She’s been a visiting artist at the American Academy of Rome and ArtPark, New York. Notable exhibitions include Festival de la Imagen, Colombia; the SoundWave Biennial, San Francisco; 1A Space Hong Kong; CyberFest, St. Petersburg, Russia; Video Guerillha, Sao Paolo; Suyama Space, Seattle; Western States Biennial, Brooklyn Art Museum; Fuori Festival, Italy; The Virtual Venice Biennale, The Map is not the Territory, Portland Art Museum; and Time-Based Art Festival, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art. Collaboration and community are central to D’Agostino’s work. She was co-founder and co-director of Mobile Projection Unit, where she worked to put projection mapping tools and skills into the hands of a diverse group of emerging artists, she is a member of the IN/body performance collective in Portland, and of Collective Action Studio, San Francisco. She is an active member of the CETI (A Creative and Emergent Technology Institute) Lab community, based out of Portland State University, where the focus is on lifelong learning and collaborative, interdisciplinary innovation in creative and emergent technologies. Elements of Field Studies travelled to Venice in May as part of four exhibitions organized by United Media Artists and the European Culture Council in parallel with the Venice Biennale.
Laura Kathrein
Laura Kathrein is a Boston-based movement artist, community arts organizer and educator whose interdisciplinary practice centers on embodiment, environmental awareness and collaboration. Through dance, movement analysis and site-specific improvisation, Kathrein explores how bodies respond to natural systems, fostering environmental empathy. Collaboration is central to her work, which frequently engages musicians, visual artists and both human and animal movers. Kathrein’s work includes iEMBODY, a series of movement video installations inside PEM’s Art & Nature Center. From 2015 to 2020, she developed Miracle of Movement, a five-year daily practice integrating embodied research, environmental engagement and community participation. She holds a Master of Education in Community Arts with a specialization in Environmental Arts from Lesley University. Her training includes ballet and modern dance techniques, contact improvisation and circus arts.
Lisa DeGrace
Sound composer Lisa DeGrace creates spatial environments that express a “sonic perfume” of people, land and spirits. Her soundscapes are created from field recordings in the natural world, MIDI manipulations of those sounds, her voice and live instrumentation. She creates spatial soundscapes developed from layers of found sounds, vocals and instrumentation. The majority of DeGrace’s work, which has been shown throughout the United States, has focused on live performance collaborations with video artists and contemporary dancers, centered around themes of consciousness, spirit, ancestors, earth, death and transformation. More recently, she has also built solo sound projects focused on grieving and memory.