Waterlines was the culmination of a 7-day community-based, intergenerational Art experience undertaken by 14 participants of the 2022 Performance Art Intensive (PAI). Part healing retreat, part social practice happening, part art educational experiment, this 90-minute performance took place at the Gremlin Theater in St. Paul, MN.
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Performance Description
An ensemble of performers unearth architectural structures and machinery buried within 4000 pounds of unfired clay. They also dig out people, pulling them from the the rubble of failed clay projects and dust. The mood is dark, contemplative and ceremonious.
In Waterlines, everything is transformed and recycled. Wooden panels with curvilinear edges are disassembled and reassembled like puzzle pieces. Soft, wet clay is pulled from abstract, sculptural land forms and worked into the cracks of reassembled pieces in a methodical and laborious act of repair.
A slick, blue slip - made from the powder of clay shards collected from the audience in a cacophonous dance party - is spread sensuously across a wall of wet clay. Behind the wall is a doorway which is slowly revealed at the climax of the show. As the clay is peeled back like earthy skin, the door opens, and a regal performer steps through. She pushes a monumental, broken ceramic vessel atop a hydraulic lift.
In the final act, the full ensemble moves across the stage, reaching for each other, making points of intersection akin to new neural pathways being formed.
About Waterlines
This performance speaks to the collective labor and creative energy needed to transform the rubble of civilizational trauma into a more creative and compassionate future. Simple, accessible symbols: doorways, rivers, vessels, horizontal lines, and the act of recycling are metaphors for a deeper message about failure, repair, patience and spiritual labor.
Waterlines took place on the 2-year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. The performance (and the immersive retreat leading up to it) were created in response to the exhaustion, division and emotional fatigue that was so palpable in our city at that time.
Unfired clay - fluid, shapeless, impressionable - is the formal and conceptual connective tissue that ties everything in the show together. Wet clay is ancient, shapeless and intelligent. Waterlines pays homage to the practice of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold.
The title is multifaceted: a “waterline” is a marking on the hull of a ship that shows when the load is at capacity. A waterline is also a stain on a landform or building when the fluid level drops after a flood - it marks the loss of something, a change, or a somatic imprint. Waterlines are the life-giving rivers that frame our landscape and are central to the geological formation of clay.
Waterlines was created and directed by Summer Hills-Bonczyk, with original sound design by Zac Hills-Bonczyk and poetic contributions by Rebecca Frost. This project was funded, in part, by an Artist Initiative Grant from the MN State Arts Board.
Waterlines performance program
Waterlines performance program: Welcome
Waterlines performance program: Cast/Crew
Waterlines performance program: Director's Statement
Waterlines performance program: Director's Statement
Waterlines performance program: Director's Statement/Bio
Waterlines performance program: Poet-in-residence statement
Waterlines performance program: Poem
Waterlines performance program: Poet-in-residence Bio
Waterlines performance program: Artists/Leaders
Waterlines performance program: Leader Statements
Waterlines performance program: PAI Participants
Waterlines performance program: PAI Participants
Waterlines performance program: PAI Participants
Waterlines performance program: Acknowledgements
Waterlines performance program (Back)