Kim Smith Claudel, Artist in Residence at Building 5

Closing Exhibition and Performance: Featuring Emma Lutz-Higgins and Tahni Holt

Sunday, November 10 at 4pm

Building 5 at NW Marine Art Works

Ghosts in the Void takes its name from a chance encounter between the artist and a man who worked in Building 5 for 30 years, when it was a bustling machine shop creating large components for sawmills and dams. Standing in the emptiness of the space, he talked of the many ghosts in the palpable void. His clear and detailed memories provide the threads that are both woven together and unraveled to create an installation that touches on loss, absence, and the ghosts of our memory. Ghosts in the Void uses light, ethereal paintings, and performance to call attention to the spiritual presence within this space—a space in which history lingers, machines no longer roar, and a buried lake lies beneath. Layered in complexity, it is a place in which yesterday’s technological optimism confronts the present moment: the profound depletion of the natural ecosystem amidst the lasting remains of a forgotten industry.

I am headed to Whitman College in Walla Walla WA. to work with Shannon Stewart on our on-going beginning-of project with the trees. We will be there from 1/08-1/14. ….”we connective tissue to roots and to branches and to sap and to wood and to bark and to slowed down energetic tree pulse.” We are planting the seeds for a community gathering research sharing at FRONT Gallery in New Orleans in February. More news to come…

Photo still from video by Shannon Stewart

Come to our First of a series of three Improvisation performances at Building 5!

Oct. 26th: Tahni Holt, Emma Lutz-Higgins and Luke Wyland

Nov. 2nd: Juma DeJesus + Yaara Valey

Nov. 9th: Linda Austin + Stephanie Lavon Trotter

“To infinite possibilities”: An interview with Muffie Delgado Connelly and Tahni Holt
Interview and editing by Kate Bredeson

On August 15, 2022, Muffie Delgado Connelly, Tahni Holt, and I sat down to talk about their dance collaboration Pulse Mountain, for which I am the dramaturg. Originally scheduled to open on July 21, 2022, Pulse Mountain was postponed due to COVID-19. We took advantage of the unexpected pause in production to think about this new work and the process of making it. Before we started our formal conversation, we chatted about Delgado Connelly’s work as choreographer on the upcoming production of Tick, Tick, BOOM! at Portland Center Stage, and how narrative and music as dramaturgical devices invite audiences to think and feel. Our discussion then segued into Pulse Mountain. What follows is an edited version of our conversation.