Performing Nature

Rather than calling them installations, Grisha Coleman refers to the elaborately constructed spaces in which she stages performance work as 'Action Stations.' Her distinction is fitting because they not only provide a site for the artist's own choreography, the environments also invite audiences to explore them independently. One element of the five-part project Echo :: System, the stations are the product of the artist's unique process of research and data interpretation. She collaborates with experts, including biologists, data specialists, architects, and designers, to collect information on distinct ecosystems and then recreate the natural ecology as an installation-based performance work. So far she has produced two of the five stations, creating 'The Abyss' on the side of a ravine and, most recently, 'The Desert' which recreated an arid expanse, complete with underground tunnels, using a combination of video installations and robotics. Her desert project premiered earlier this month in Pittsburgh, and plans are in the works for 'The Forest,' 'The Prarie,' and 'The Volcano' to complete the series. In the meantime, video and other documentation from previous performances are viewable on her Web site. With the media volume on climate catastrophes reaching as high as it is, her work is reminder that for all our calculations, the notion of an ideal ecology is tempered by so many human projections, and it is perhaps a provocation to be more attentive to the natural word while becoming more imaginative with our interpretations.