Live Performance by Seth Cluett

Join us on Thursday, October 17 at 6:30pm for artist Seth Cluett’s solo performance, “small eddies of interlocking lives,” at Pratt Manhattan Gallery! Cluett’s piece explores forms of interaction drawn from ecological systems responding to climate change and extraction-capitalism. The performance takes a quote by anthropologist Anna Tsing in her book “The Mushroom at the End of the World” as a point of departure:

“People and trees are caught in irreversible histories of disturbance. But some kinds of disturbance have been followed by regrowth of a sort that nurtures many lives. Peasant oak-pine forests have been eddies of stability and cohabitation. Yet they are often put into motion by great cataclysms, such as the deforestation that accompanies national industrialization. Small eddies of interlocking lives within great rivers of disturbance: these are surely sites for thinking about human talents for remediation. But there is also the forest’s point of view. Despite all insults, resurgence has not yet ceased.”

Using handmade instruments and a performance vocabulary built around focus and inattention, the work explores the ways in which disturbance enables remarkable growth, generating new forms, renewing structures, and exposing buried strata, which offer a small optimism for the resiliency of the natural world.

This performance is presented in conjunction with Pratt Manhattan Gallery’s current exhibition, “Seeing Sound,” curated by Barbara London and organized by Independent Curators International (ICI). Seeing Sound is on view at Pratt Manhattan Gallery through December 17, 2024.

RSVP is required.

This event is free and open to the public and will be recorded.