Murky Medicine Swamp
Installation. Materials: Soil, branches, water, fog, fog machine, cement bricks, ants, water beetles, lichen, moss, lab equipment, stone, logs, plastics, silicone tubes, clay, spraypaint, twig baskets, mushrooms, video projectors, speakers, lights. Size: 400 x 900 x 2200 cm. Photography: Andrej Vasilenko
For the occasion of Earth Bonds at Rupert, Vilnius (LT), Venus Jasper brought their research into Wetland Worship and speculative Swamp Goddesses to Rupert in the form of a site-specific installation and performance.
"In the form of a landscape, a multi-media installation offers itself as a wetland medicine lab through which Griepink considers our relationships with the known and unknown, the tangible ecological and the ephemeral, and the murky in-between that offers medicinal and mystical aspects: the medicine of smell and stench, medicine of wet-to-dry, water-to-land substances, medicine of submerging, covering one’s skin, the medicine of reflection in waters, the medicine of emotion, sadness, grief, and death." - Tautvydas Urbelis, Curator of Rupert Vilnius.
This installation is comprised of local herbal medicinal plants, cement bricks, a large island of earth with a swampy pond, fog makers, stones, branches, copper and glass distillation apparatus, lab amenities, chaga mushrooms, cordyceps mushrooms, rotting trees turned into tables, woven willow baskets, PVC tubes, swamp water, microphones, water pumps, ropes, buckets, ceramic herbal tools, clay, sticks, spray-paint, lights, beamers, soundscape, scentscape, living ants, lichen, moss, and smelly vapors.
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The installation was also the site for the live performance OAKBaLLZ and EELSkin, in which Venus Jasper invoked and speculated on our relationships with wetlands as a space of emotional worship. In the live piece, the artist enters the portal of the medicine swamp and vocalises their experience and desires.
- Murky Medicine Swamp was shown at Rupert, Vilnius (LT) in 2023 during the Earth Bonds Symposium which also featured: Victoria Ivanova (Serpentine Galleries), Sofia Lemos (TBA21–Academy), Lina Martin-Chan and Calum Bowden (Trust), Aoife Fannin (Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC)), HASHIA, Jenna Sutela, Barnett Cohen, Marissa Lee Benedict and David Rueter, and Ngoc Nau.
- Murky Medicine Swamp is part of the ongoing research project Wetland Worship.
Credits
CREDIT
concept and Creation: Venus Jasper
Production lead: Eglė Kliučinskaitė
Lights: Justas Bo
Photography: Andrej Vasilenko
𝘌𝘈𝘙𝘛𝘏 𝘉𝘖𝘕𝘋𝘚 was part of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 organized between Rupert Recidency (Vilnius), E-WERK Luckenwalde (Germany) and LUMA Arles (France), co-funded by The European Union, Teltow Fläming and the Lithuanian Cultural Council.Symposium “Earth Bonds” is also co-funded by Vilniaus miesto savivaldybė, Nordic Culture Point.
THANKS
Amsterdams Fund of the Arts
Amarte, Mondrian Fund