2020-2023, Duration: 15:37, Single channel video installation

Producer/Writer/Director: Mandy Morrison
Animation: Tori Porter
Music and Sound Design: Jason Charney
Participants: Jose Carlos Conceicao, Mandy Morrison, Raimundo da Silva, Charles Silva, Dete Vieira
Grupo de Capoeira Uniao, Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil, Escola Criança Feliz, Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil

Made with the support from the Tree of Life Foundation, The Maryland State Council on the Arts, Peat and Repeat, and many others.

2020
(Installation view) Six-channel video installation with audio
Dimensions: 4’ x 40’
Duration: 02:31 (loop)
 
Spirits of Promise and Loss, is an animation that uses photographic images of the Old Town Mall in Baltimore as a backdrop for the behaviors and movements of ghost-like characters that populate a decrepit model of utopian possibility. 
 
Old Town Mall was one of numerous experiments across the U.S. in urban mall development that strove to bring suburban shoppers, back downtown. By creating a thoroughfare developed to maximize pedestrian traffic such malls placed parking and cars on the fringes of the walkway, providing storefronts that faced one another on an open thoroughfare given over to walkers.  
 
It was to be the antidote to suburban strip malls, which drew customers away from urban centers. Enticed by the communal village experience, which featured a welcoming walkway, free of car traffic, the pedestrian mall generated hope for urban revival and long-term sustainability.
 
Initially popular, the Old Town Mall currently is mostly abandoned and many shop storefronts are shuttered. In creating this work, I am worked with dancers as models who generate unique movements that speak to different aspects of the mall’s past history, that are captured in video and translated into the drawn characters. 

Spirits of Promise and Loss was part of a solo exhibition that took place at the Peale Center in Baltimore, Maryland in 2023, and part of the group show Codex, at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, in Baltimore, Maryland in 2021.

Assistance in the creation of this project comes  from students of UMBC's Dance Department who generously donated their time as models, as well from artist Chris Kozjar.

2018
Single-Channel Video Installation with Audio, TRT: 1:43 (Looped Video)
12' x  26'
Performers: Mandy Morrison, Tiara Francis, Sammantha Siegle
Director of Photography: Aimi Bouillion

Password: clean

This project was made with the cooperation and the participation of students in the Dance Department at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

(1) Boxed, 2017
(Documentation)
Two-Channel Performative Video Installation with audio
(mapped projections on panels and boxes)
Dimensions: 10’ 6” x 37’ x 7’3”
Duration: 02:25 (loop)

(2) ModBrut, 2017

Performative video installation (projected on panels) with audio

Dimensions: 42” x 65” x 31”

Duration: 03:36 (loop)

ModBrut plays with the contemporary paradigm of physical mobility in a planned architectural environment – in this case, the university campus (University of Maryland, Baltimore County). As the body’s relationship to such space requires the practical flow of forward motion, I developed insertions of performative actions carried out by students and faculty that defied normative patterns of movement on the campus. Viewers of the installation saw “flow” subverted – though not physically interrupted – by these actions. Within the installation, there was physical disruption of the image created by projecting the video onto angular sheets of foam core protruding from the walls. The audio consisted of ethnographic observations recorded by several participants. Given the task of identifying their experiences of specific sites on campus, they reflected on their own experiences of the modernist campus both before and after participating in the piece.

(3) ModMod, 2017

Using performative gestures with my body amidst modernist urban structures in downtown Baltimore.

2021
Dimensions: Variable
Single channel Video Installation with Audio
Duration: 2:26 (loop)
 
In this single channel video piece, random GIF’s downloaded from the internet are inserted into photo stills of a distressed fence surrounding  a vacant lot. 
 
The GIF file is a MEME of connective tissue, replicated and widely shared through social media. As it has inadvertently become an ephemeral means of social bonding, operating within minuscule yet infinite moments of repetitive gestures, and gaffes, within them are hopes for  recognition through remunerative clicks, downloads, and widespread monetization. Along with the embedded GIF’s are the bifurcated text from the historian Timothy Snyder’s book, “The Road to Unfreedom”. This inserted text is the result of eliminating nearly all of the words from a page of the first chapter  in “The Road to Unfreedom”, almost Buddhist in its reflection upon the sanctity of the present moment of political and cultural polarization.

This work was exhibited at the Tashmnoo Springs Pumping Station in the group exhibit "Microbiology of Circumstance" in  September of 2021. The Tashmoo Springs Pumping Station is a historic waterworks facility in on  Martha's Vineyard. The town stopped using the Tashmoo Spring facility as its primary water supply in 1971.  The building and surrounding land became listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.
 

2012-2016
TRT: 11:00
4-channel Video Installation with Sound
9'x 23'

A reflective performative work, filmed at the sustainable community of the same name located in Arizona. In it I use physical (bodily) aural and textual expression as a conduit for exploration of the architect’s creative and personal attempt to integrate natural systems with intentional communal living.
In considering an alternative to the frenetic/wired pace of urban existence, I ventured to this community attracted by its premise, unique building structures, immersion in nature, and isolation from other communities.
The site is something of a relic of the ‘60’s and early 70’s, in which counter-cultural experiments in agriculture and urban living had gained currency. Embedded in counter- cultural idealism, the reality –as well as resistance– to seeing such ideas made manifest in the Western world is continually evolving. Yet it is emergent, and as all structures are built on thoughts, such concepts are continually being re-imagined.
While historically iconic and architecturally influential, Arcosanti’s initial premise –to be a self-sustaining community for up to five thousand people– remains largely theoretical. 
In my time there, a bodily reverence for the site and its playful architecture, coupled with poetic observations about the community experience set against the scenic natural backdrop, inform the textual overlays in the piece.

Made with support from the Wexner Center’s Artist Video Program, Columbus, OH

2001-04
Durational Performance
3:00 (excerpt, performance documentation)

Participants
Kelly Kivland
Rebecca Davis
Nora Stevens

And with help from
the University of Minnesota's Art Department

Locations
Downtown Minneapolis (2001)
Cuchifritos Gallery, Essex Street Market, NYC (2004)
Outdoor plaza, Metropolitan Museum of Art (2003)

On three separate occasions, I did a performance piece titled “Initial Public Offering” to arouse questions from a public accustomed to seeing lavish corporate promotions of new products targeting them as potential consumers. I distributed promotional buttons with a logo and query: “Who Decides What Matters?”  The product being pitched to consumers­­–The Co-Dependent Suit– which were two connected orange jump-suits  such as those used in the prison system and maintenance industry- had no tangible use.

My interest was to generate dialogue about the relationship between capitalist output, and the values purportedly represented by such products. 

Originally commissioned  in 2001 by the University of Minnesota's Visiting Artist Program

2008-09

In the summer of 2008, I spent 6 weeks working with rural young people in northern Illinois at an innovative artist's residency, called Blue Sky Project. The residency, which hosted an international consortium of artists,  paired working artists with young people in the creation of new work.

During  my residency we focused our attention on creating  performative pieces that examined 'context'; what  spaces mean, what are the expectations within a space,  how do we feel in these spaces and how could one disrupt these expectations.

We had the use of various commercial spaces and the building and grounds of a local community college.
Young people chose the locations and created their own costumes for certain perfomative experiences.

Blue Sky ran from 2006-2012 and was located initially in Woodstock, Illinois north of Chicago before relocating to Dayton where it was affiliated with the University of Dayton  from  2009-12.


 

2014
100 Days
Duration: 30:00
Performance
Lyons Recreational Site, Staten Island, NY
 
Participants: Angelo, M. Angelas, Terry Bennet, Gabriella Dennery, Rachel Marie Carson, John Foxell, Lori Greene
Artist/Facilitator: Mandy Morrison
Assistant Director/Social Media: Lauren Denitzio
 
 
100 Days, a spoken performance, was conceived to capture a diverse range of perspectives. Ever since Roosevelt pioneered the 100-day concept taking office during the Great Depression, it has been used by the U.S. media,  and scholars as a gauge of political success and activism. In the lives of ordinary people however, 100 days is an arbitrary timeframe that can demarcate either, an incremental changes in the flow of daily life or a dramatic shift in one’s personal landscape through unforeseen events. Through the mining of personal stories, this series of interwoven narratives, illuminates a range of insights taking into account a specific timeframe from each participant’s life, as a point of reference.

The performance was presented on December 7, 2014, and made with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts.

2004
Duration: 10:00 / Dixon Place/Chasama Performance Space, New York City
Performers:
Mandy Morrison
Kelly Kivland
Rebecca Davis
Nora Stevens

Text and Audio Design
Mandy Morrison

Set Design: 
Mathias Neumann

Video Effects:
Jeff Morey

Using the construct of Marie Antoinette' s stance (and purported quote) toward her peasant population, "Let them eat cake!",  I worked with collaborators to generate a multi-media performance loosely based on the facts of her life.

Some of the visuals were derived from 1960's pop culture;   which included a vintage album cover of a woman sitting poised in a cake ("Whipped Cream and Other Delights), as well as tracks ("A Taste of Honey") from the album as background audio. We also used a hair styles and matching waitress costumes to reflect the era.

The dancers perform  as angry waitresses who serve up real cake from from a tier of the Antoinette 'Dress" to audience members, as the cake-sitting 'Marie' quips facetiously about her pesky subordinate 'help'.
The  main character derides all who are below her royal  'station' and at the performance's end, the waitresses turn on their 'Mistress' and attack her with knives and destroying  the cake/dress she sits in.