Screendance by Erika Martin and Nancy Julia Hicks

Video, movement, screen print on fabric, water from the Mississippi 

Movers in the video work: Shannon Hartle, Zoë Koenig, Kaitlin Craven, Sophia Diehl, and Erika Martin

 

This work is a collaboration between dancer and choreographer Erika Martin, installation artist and poet Nancy Julia Hicks, and the history of the Mississippi river in the twin cities. Considering the effects of colonialism, the artists selected the Mill City ruins as a site of investigation to create a piece that interacts with the historical and contemporary realities of white settlement. Through choreography by Martin and movement by dancers, and interactions between the site and objects created by Hicks, the work probes the history of white bodies’ attempt to control and harness water and industrial construction as a metaphor for the violence and destruction.