Rising Pink Clouds and Digging Down Deep; Eco-Paradoxes in The Art of Agnes Denes (original) (raw)

This paper is drawn from two chapters of the current draft of my thesis. My research, both practical and theoretical, examines the ways that the performance of digging earth can negotiate what it means to dwell in the city. I will begin with a brief discussion of the potential of performance outside the theatre building to negotiate the ways we live in the city and also some of the pitfalls it is prone to. Before comparing the contexts and form of two iterations of Agnes Denes's most famous work, Wheatfield, I will explain, with the help of social anthropologist, Tim Ingold, how digging earth resonates as a task that defines our modes of dwelling and how it can be understood as an ecological practice. After analysis of Agnes Denes's Wheatfield -A Confrontation (Lower Manhattan 1982) and Wheatfield by Agnes Denes (Milan 2015), I will touch on their relevance to my own performance experiment, Man Digs Pond and conclude with an analysis of an earlier work by Denes; Rising Pink Clouds (un-realised concept 1972). Throughout, I will be analysing the ways in which performance of the labour of digging earth through time can highlight economic and ecological transactions that define the ways we dwell on land in the city. This paper will end by pointing to following discussions in my thesis regarding the ways in which the performance of digging earth resonates with the current geological age of the Anthropocene.