What Does it Mean To Be a Local in America Today?
In the 21st Century, human migration is at its peak. In a globalized society, we move or migrate great distances for work, opportunity, school, safety, and needing more “space” or for Love.
Meanwhile, we long to belong, to have a place to be, to be welcome. Even those who live in their hometown may grow up feeling disconnected— just here because there was no opportunity to go another place and no chance to make a choice— or disconnected from the land as they spend days within a non-longer-agricultural world of drywalls and concrete sidewalks or the experience breaks within the community.
Landbaths are works in the WE HERE NOW series by artist Britta Riley that invite us to linger in a fertile awkwardness as we look at what it means to be a local in the United States. Who gets to be a local in an age of gentrification, immigration controversy, housing shortages, and changing geopolitical forces that impact all of our daily lives? Who gets to answer this question?
Landbaths offer an opportunity to initiate, affirm, renew, and celebrate a relationship with place, land, ecology, time, and community. They open vulnerable questions and commemorate this local relationship with an intimate multisensory full-body tactile encounter with sited earth. In a language of organic matter and geological time, the events and installations bring the reciprocity of belonging to life right HERE in a memorable moment NOW within the communities WE choose.
Landbath at ArtYard Kingston
Nestled between the lushly forested Catskill Mountains and the mighty Hudson River, NY, the Landbath at ArtYard’s new inner city location will transform and consecrate a former bank site by cracking open its suffocating asphalt crust, exposing long-dormant soil to the revitalizing kiss of rain and sun. During multi-sensory ceremonial events, participants will immerse themselves in both collective and intimate experiences, sinking into an earthen chair while being gently blanketed with warm, nutrient-rich forest pulp that simultaneously nourishes their bodies and the awakening land beneath. The proposed installation culminates in a complementary water ritual where freshly dusted participants will wade through a crystalline spring-sourced pool dancing with aquatic vegetation, conjuring a perpetual cycle of renewal that honors both the rich cultural history of the land and establishes a welcoming sanctuary for generations to come.
