PERFORMANCE ART

ECO-PARAPSYCHOLOGY: INVESTIGATING PARANORMAL ENVIRONMENTALISM ON THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

In 2007, I launched a Performance Art series called Eco-Parapsychology: Investigating Paranormal Environmentalism on the Chesapeake Bay. Realizing that art is illusion, I explore, like the Spirit Photographers, hoax in what is otherwise photographic truth to the public-at-large. From start to finish, my work is performative: creating the profession Eco-parapsychologist, promoting pseudo documents as evidence, and acting in front of my camera in handmade costumes.

The historical/mythological characters I choose to impersonate as apparitions held ethical ideals which are now, by default of time, out of context. Underlying messages from their initial social lessons are misconstrued or simply forgotten. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, humanistic tenets are difficult to harbor when the world is uninhabitable. The legends of these revered personages are deconstructed to motivate contemporary awareness of the local environment. My message is fully intended to be absurd; the dead returning to fix the planet for the apathetic living is tongue-in-cheek. In some form or another, the characters become eco-social.

Although my work mainly addresses ecological concerns on the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the complexity of identity and circumstance among an era of massive globalization surfaces. Society and nature are interconnected in the biosphere where all life co-exists as one superorganism. The word globalization, which refers to a three-dimensional abstraction of our planet on a spindle, is replaced with biosphericalization. Human individuality and intersectionality are analyzed as a performance on the bio-stage.

1. Queen Elizabeth I, Elizabeth River, Norfolk, March 7, 2016: Revered for allegedly defeating the Spanish Armada, this queen is now appearing as ghost in her attempts to stop contemporary ship invasion carrying non-native species in ballast water. In particular, she minds veined rapa whelk brought in from the Sea of Japan. This whelk is predator to native oysters and clams necessary to a healthy ecology and economy of the Chesapeake Bay.

2. Chesapeake Spirit, Larchmont Apartments, Norfolk, May 7, 2016: Spirit bathing in a bathtub protested, “The Chesapeake Bay is too dirty from faulty sewage treatment plants.” Wastewater entering the Bay can be reduced if sewage plants were upgraded. Dirty water isn’t the only problem. Too much nutrient (waste) in the Bay replaces oxygen with nitrogen. Massive algae blooms grow in nitrogen-rich environments, blocking sunlight and disabling subaquatic vegetation from photosynthesizing oxygen.

3. Grace Sherwood, Lynnhaven River, Virginia Beach, May 25, 2016: Ghost of widowed Pungo, Virginia farmer accused of witchcraft appeared floating on the Lynnhaven River. In 1706, she was crossbound and ducked in the river. According to accusers’ logic, water was pure, therefore rejected demons possessing a witch. Hence, the guilty floated. Those who were innocent drowned. Today, the river is heavily contaminated. Grace returned to prove she is not a witch.4. Elizabeth Van Lew, Wayne Creek, Norfolk, Virginia, May 11, 2017: Ghost of Richmond Civil War abolitionist was seen freeing blue crabs from crab cages on Wayne Creek, a tidal estuary of the Chesapeake Bay. Lack of habitat, such as seagrass, makes the blue crabs vulnerable to over-harvest and predation, thus, the low population of only 38% left in the Bay. Van Lew proves once more to be a revolutionary thinker, not “Crazy Bet”, as she believes a moratorium on crabs is long overdue.

5. Virgen, Grandview Reserve, Hampton, January 2, 2015: The apparition of this Virgin from Spain occurred near a sand dune in Grandview Nature Preserve. Pointing to cans and other debris in the bushes where waterfowl nest, the Virgin commented on how disrespectful we are for dumping trash along the watershed. She added that she watched over those who humbly pick up shoreline litter, those who prevent harm to waterfowl, fish, and other wildlife.

6. The Buddha, Chesapeake Bay, VA Beach, August 15, 2015: Buddha was seen at Chicks Beach purifying toxic chemicals, mainly PCB and mercury, from the Chesapeake Bay. PCB enters the Bay primarily through stormwater runoff, i.e. pollutants on the roads and parking lots flow into the Bay through city storm drains. Atmospheric deposition of mercury into the Bay is mainly caused by coal-fired power plant emissions mixing with rain or snow. Buddha says: Mediation, not meditation, is needed.

7. Jesus, Chesapeake Bay, Virginia Beach, August 4, 2015: Jesus saw the devastation of making fishers out of men. They said unto him: “We have but two menhaden left in the sea.” Jesus said, “Summon the multitude; bring them hither to me.” He commanded the multitude to sit on the beach, took the fishes from their mouths, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and returned the menhaden to the sea.

8. Ships Susan Constant, Godspeed, Discovery, James River, April 20, 2018: The three founding ships originally entered the James River to eventually settle in Jamestown.  They were seen as ghost ships navigating up the James River.  Today, they float to bring the cormorant, an endangered water fowl, a place to nes–an alternative to the transmission towers which stretch the River five miles wide.

9. Exhibition Poster, Manolete Fanning a Blue Crab, March 21, 2018: Blue crabs are going extinct due to anoxia balboa write more here… Using his cape as a means to resuscitate the native crab…

10. Chesapeake Bay Gold, October 2015: The Crassostrea virginica is the native oyster often referred to as Chesapeake Bay Gold, or white gold, because of the exorbitant amount of money their harvesting generated during past centuries.  Now, almost extinct, t„his work of art resembling currency replaces Chesapeake Bay Gold.  If purchased at face value, the money procured is used to restore fisheries.  Each piece of art is signed and numbered to insure authenticity.

Eco-parapsychology is the unique scientific study of activities inexplicable to physical laws, in particular paranormal environmentalism. Where several forms of study fall into parapsychology, such as telepathy and psychokinesis, my study delves exclusively in the investigation of apparitions of dead people, religious spirits, and mythical creatures performing environmental acts along the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Both ancient and modern history is rife with accounts of mystifying sightings, and findings. Extensive study on these phenomena has been carried out since the late 19th century. With minimal evidence provided in most of these cases, eco-parapsychology is genuine proof. Like all sciences, eco-parapsychology explores the unknown and, through collected data, tries to uncover truths of our fragile existence on earth. As an inquisitive species, we always look afar for answers. For example, we invest a lot of time and money traveling to the moon, Mars, the outer limits of the physical universe gathering information in an attempt to better understand life. We subscribe to religious paradigms of living righteously in order to transgress, after life, to a better place — the promise of heaven. Eco-parapsychology examines our fascination with the intangible beyond, and, conversely, our apathy in immediate surroundings. Through the investigation of apparitions conducting proactive and generous acts towards nature here on earth, eco-parapsychology debunks the notion that the conclusive answer to existence lies elsewhere. It is as if these manifestations are trying to tell us that we should first concern ourselves with here and now, planet earth, a paradise, a natural environment integral to our lives and the lives of future entities.
BLACK PICKET FENCE: A PHOTOJOURNAL DIARY AND PERFORMANCE
The process of photographing these homes was a means to conjure silenced domestic violence and confront it. The performative process documents each house cohabited as a newly-wed wife with her husband, places where she yearned a metaphorical white picket fence where everything was protected and perfect as promised to guileless girls growing up. However, instead of the fairy-tale, she witnessed emotional neglect, psychological intimidation, and physical abuse. The journey to photograph each of the houses in which they cohabited was a way to encounter the inconclusiveness haunting her life. Being able to stand in the presence of these homes, invokers of difficult memories, demonstrated she had finally overcome that past life.
DIARY OF A PISCES: AN ASEMIC LANGUAGE AND PHOTO JOURNAL

The artist’s diary of her experiences due to drastic life changes, the longing to discover and reestablish what has been lost or taken away and the incurring inabilities, unacceptances, heartbreaks, failures, hopelessness, surrenders.

BANAL MUSE
Muses of ancient Greece were goddesses who inspirited mortals to dance, act, write poetry, and record astronomy and history.  In this Performance Art piece, the artist portrays the role of Muse in a modern, day-to-day world filled with (what the artist calls) convenient consumer aesthetic.  The general lack of funding and apathy towards appreciating the arts has her acting a stream of very mundane skits which challenge the spectator to consider if art needs to be entertaining, and conversely, if entertainment is ever artistic.  The work also addresses the issue of women being the inspirers of men and never the artists in the founding of classical humanism.
PREPARING THE LANDSCAPE FOR THOMAS COLE: MAINTENANCE ART
This performance art project comments on the manipulation of nature practiced by many landscape painters to suit their aesthetic. Specifically, like the Hudson River School painters, the artist seeks to document the “perfection of nature” in the North American Continent.  The artist incorporates into the theme of “perfection as human construct” the stereotypical, idealized female role of looking impeccable while house cleaning. The “female” ridiculously tidies up the vast sea-to-shining-sea (the endless Southwestern Desert, the thick Appalachian forests, the infinite Atlantic coast, and so on). Perhaps then the wilderness will be manicured for Romanticist ideologies–acceptable in fine art, as beauty. Inevitably, the metamessage surfaces: a metaphorical “clean-up” of the shameful mess Western settlers have left.
QUIXOTIC MACHINATIONS: STRUGGLES OF A SPANISH-AMERICAN IMMAGRANT IN LA MANCHA
Ironically, my performances are an exploration where nothing is found. Visiting no one in forgotten ghost towns of La Mancha served to prove a failed introspection; abandoned houses in the arduous plains provide the emptiness of lost history. Deeply personal, the work stems from my regret of living in a different continent separated from my family and Spanish roots. On a broader scale, the portraits comment on social flux and human migration. In this case, the general disdain for rural life, as urban communities offer more commodities, has its repercussion: people detach from individual and cultural realization. My displaced identity and decayed traditions are illustrated through Don Quixote’s tactic for making life as impossible as possible: battling self-induced machinations, posing in torturous never-ending predicaments, elevating phantasmagoric climax, only to fall to the omission of hopes for a resolution.
DISPLACED MYTHOLOGIES: SELF-PORTRAITS WITHIN LOST CAUSES
From the beginning we confused everything to suit our own contexts. Then postmodernism really screwed it up. Obviously, it’s Ovid’s, Dante’s, and Chaucer’s fault, to blame a few. I took the liberty to do the same. The photographs in this series are a reflection of how everything has always been up to be constructed, deconstructed, interpreted, misinterpreted, globalized, colonized, and, in the end, lost in translation. Represented here is a contemporaneous, personal-political manipulation of the “same old” repetition of subject matter in classical art smothered in the patina of gaudy Academic beautification. Of course, I know the mainstream are more comfortable with cliche. However, I also enjoy the use of my own symbolism. So, there you have it. The dialogue is up for grabs, or as I coined it: Derridada.