Middle of Nowhere at Pinelands Preservation Alliance
September 4, 2021
In-person and Virtual
The Pine Barrens feature-length film by David Scott Kessler with live score by The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra.
Glenn Jones - (Thrill Jockey) Glenn Jones is an instrumentalist of unparalleled skill and creativity. As a masterful raconteur Jones’ guitar work is both complex and sublime, intricate and emotional.
KooF - Multi-instrumentalist musician from Philadelphia. Jazz, electronic, ambient
Inhabited: short experimental landscape films.
full descriptions here
Pine Barrens by Nancy Holt, 1975
The Whelming Sea by Sean Hanley, 2020
Landscape to be Invented by Josh Weissbach, 2020
Moon Viewing by Nadia Hironaka & Matthew Suib, 2019
‘Ghost Forest’ Madison Square Park and Fotografiska New York
in conjunction with a site-specific installation by Maya Lin
Screening and Performance at Fotografiska, November 9th 2021
Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest, a towering stand of forty-nine haunting Atlantic white cedar trees, is a newly commissioned public artwork. Lin brings her vision as an artist and her agency as an environmental activist to this project, a memory of germination, vegetation, and abundance and a harsh symbol of the devastation of climate change. The height of each tree, around forty feet, overwhelms human scale and stands as a metaphor for the outsized impact of a looming environmental calamity.
The Pine Barrens will screen with musical accompaniment by The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra as part of a series of curated public works planned throughout the run of the exhibition both a live a virtual experience.
https://madisonsquarepark.org/art/exhibitions/maya-lin-ghost-forest/
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE I&II
2016 & 2019
Whitesbog Village in Brendan Byrne State Forest
Partnership with Atlas Obscura and Whitesbog Preservation Trust
On two occasions in 2016 and 2019, set at Whitesbog, a 3000 acre historic Pine Barrens village, MIDDLE OF NOWHERE consisted of gallery and site-specific contemporary artwork including sculpture, video, sound installations, film screenings, musical performances. Attendees were invited to tours of the historic cranberry and blueberry farm to view the installations among the fields, bogs, trails, and industrial structures.
Founded by David Scott Kessler as an extension of his ongoing Pine Barrens project, MIDDLE OF NOWHERE’s aim was to celebrate and reflect on the challenge and mystery of the natural world; how it shapes our identities and our symbiotic -- yet often destructive relationship with it.
2016, 2019 Site-Specific event
Whitesbog Historic Preservation, Brendan Byrne State Park, Pine Barrens New Jersey
outdoor and gallery installations, musical performances, film screenings
produced and curated by David Scott Kessler
co-curators - Kristen Neville Taylor (2016), Jen Brown (2019)
co-producer (2019) - John Pettit, Atlas Obscura
co-producer - Whitesbog Preservation Trust
ROOFTOP FILMS
SUMMER SERIES 2019
Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn New York
As part of Rooftop Film’s 2019 Summer Series, The Pine Barrens screened with live musical accompaniment by The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra.
The event included work by Eric Ruin and animated burning pitch pine trees created by David Scott Kessler were projected on the cemetery’s Victorian mausoleums.