Continuous Deforming Landscape

H264-2K-Test Flights-3-07-Sarah Muehlbauer-visual art performance, rope-Thu 5-24-2018 from Sarah Muehlbauer on Vimeo.

*WORKS-IN-PROGRESS VIDEO*

"Continuous Deforming Landscape" is a piece I recently developed for "Things That Survived The Winter". I choreographed it in residence at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts to killer sound by Rexedog. A rope, a photograph, a taped square, and a pile of dirt mark the boundaries between image and reality, space/ form, and site/ non-site/ body as landscape. The piece centers heavily on deconstruction and reconstruction of the physical aspects of walking, standing, lying, hanging, and writhing, and on a death and rebirth element transcribed through material (dirt), embodiment (growth and decay), and generosity (community involvement).

As a central symbol, CDL features what I call the "Entrail Labyrinth" -- a costume piece I developed to articulate visceral health and embodiment, with accompanying feelings of isolation, vulnerability, meditation, play, creation, birth, and fundamental connection. A woven labyrinth of "entrails" becomes a breastplate that is both protective and permeable. Through an opening at the navel, delicate strings of viscera roll out to become a community jump-rope… as well as a length of rope to climb in power and exposure, with the risk and reward of losing identity. It is a scene which has been enacted with audience volunteers as well as professional performers (in this video the former).

--Thank you to PSCA for hosting me as an artist, to Rexedog, and to Ben Grinberg for hosting this night of performances.--