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¡DARN!2025 www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQCMf4lsrjo

¡DARN!2025 www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQCMf4lsrjo

¡DARN! is a performance installation with video where I move a yarn-like ball of barbed wire along a road-- pushing and pulling the total length of wire contained in the ball (4KM), in an effort of sacred-folly/sacred-play to embody ideas of futility, which I believe to be a necessary and fundamental aspect of the creative transformative process. The installation is comprised of video, the tools used to move the wire ball: ropes, climbing carabiners, steel rod, old military back-pack frame, wooden hand paddles/protectors, as well as an old canvas remnant (upon which is printed an image of the wooden paddles at 2KM distance), 3D printed hands, life-size photo of the ball used, and the suit jacket worn during the performance.
With ¡DARN! I consider the barbed wire, wrapped into a yarn-like ball (salvaged from a historic ranch on the NewMexico/Texasborderanddatingfromthelate1860’s),asanobjectoffocusedplayandperformance. While the history/creation of barbed wire parallels the violent segmentation of the American & other landscapes, an early tool of capitalism, private property and prisons, which cut through the land and cultures without regard for sentient beings--animals and humans alike, ¡DARN! reconsiders and reimagines this material. Embedded in these
actions of 'play' as I pull and push this unwieldly object, is a ritual of undoing, exploring what it means to create fromsomethingthathasbeentraditionallyusedtoseparate,alienateanddelineate. Howdoesundoingoftheyarn also allow for undoing other stories, the yarns told/created, and to darn (as repair). ¡DARN! actively redresses in order to rewild/deconstruct/ and reconstruct concepts and attitudes woven within philosophies and policies that are detrimental to our human collective landscapes and all other sentient and non-sentient species on the planet.
¡DARN! focuses on the physical presence and materiality of the objects which inform central exploratory themes of movement, migration, borders, boundaries. It enacts questions such as: what does it mean to carry the consequences of our actions, our mere living, and what does that undoing, that unravelling, and that reimagining look like... and can we? how do we? What forms will emerge? Through the alteration of the materials themselves, embedded histories are transformed. We are transformed.