"Hands to Earth (The Shortest Distance)"
Video installation project

In American environmentalist Wendell Berry’s book, The Unsettling of America, he quotes: “Find the shortest, simplest way between the earth, the hands and the mouth.” The small-scale farmer engages direct physical contact with the land - seed, soil and plants – with the hands being integral to the labor as well as the fundamental link between “earth” and “mouth” in an ecologically healthy system. Observation of the activities and labor on small farms in several Midwestern states during site visits have been documented from 2015-2016 through video-audio recordings, interviews, etc., capturing different phases of the agricultural season. The collected material will be edited into audio-video montages & vignettes and projected in a sculptural space patterned after a hoophouse design and constructed of agribon and PVC pipe.

Farm in projected images: Sandhill Farm, Rutledge, MO

Photographs: Lisa Wigoda

 (Work-in-progress; installation may also incorporate live performance)