Interactive Installation for: Near Death Performance Art Experience,
Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA 2013
Participants were asked to navigate the interactive installation while meditating on this question:
"If we could dream a new world what would it be like?"
Photographic Documentation: Faith Johnson
Video Documentation: Daniel S. Deluca, edited by Sandrine Schaefer
The Bending of Light and Other Senses
Solo Show, The Dino Eli Gallery, New York, NY 2011
The Bending of Light and Other Senses, an exhibit including video works and an interactive performance during gallery hours. The show explores the spiritual nature of rainbows and the possibility of psychic connections between humans. This interactive performance invites audience members to send psychic messages to each other through shape and color. The performance work is a continuation of the Transference Project, a long-term project done in collaboration with artist Leighton Collier Roux. The Transference Project spanned over the several years in which the artists communicate with each other psychically from opposite coastlines.The Bending of Light and Other Senses opens up an interactive space for what Joseph Campbell, author and historian, refers to as a kind of serious play, a space where we can indulge in possibilities that may crystalize into new ways of seeing and connecting.
Documentation Faith Johnson
Interactive multi medium installation for the Boston Children's Museum, Boston, MA 2014
Documentation by Sean Johnson
Film clip from "Star Traveler,” a collaboration with Magical Approach
Performative action and plexiglass pyramid in collaboration with Lauren Payne, The Homestead Artist Residency, Willow, AK, 2010
Documentation by Lauren Payne
Your Breath Holds Me Above the Water
Bordering the Invisible, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA 2007
There is a blow up pool full of water. I ask people to fill plastic bags with their breath and pin them to my clothes. I tell them that I would like to see if their breath could keep me above the water. Many hands cover me with pockets of breath…they become my outer lungs. I test these efforts and find that I can float…I am held by the collective breath…I hug their gifts lovingly to my body…for safety…for comfort. And when the water becomes too cold and I cannot release the air quickly enough--hands come to my aid and I am released from the moment’s end.
Documentation by Philip Johnson
Suburban Dreams
Video, 2007
Objects for Remembering, Interactive installation, for Worlds Within Worlds, Proof Gallery, Boston, MA, 2015
Participants are asked to gather in 3 under the canopy and find a common dream.
Interactive performance in collaboration with Leighton Collier Roux
Firehouse 13, Providence, RI 2008
We set up a table with gold paint, glitter, and sequins. We offer the audience a chance to have gold hands for the evening. We are investigating ways of seeing ourselves….our hands. What if we thought of our hands as magic….what if we thought of our power to do? The gold is a reference to the precious and draws awareness to our hands for the evening…to each other’s hands…how they move….what they are capable of.
Documentation by Sean Johnson
Earth Response (burial series)
Performative Action, The Homestead Artist Residency, Willow, AK, 2010. Photo documentation by Lauren Payne
Apparitions of a Forest (making presence known)
Video, The Homestead Artist Residency, Willow, AK 2010
The Meaning of Circles
Durational performance, The Homestead Artist Residency, Willow, AK, 2010
(duration: 10 days/1-2hrs per day)
I walk in a circle…wishing to journey into places that have no path and that you cannot see. Stirring time…I walk in a circle. Will I leave some of my presence behind here if I walk long enough? I walk in a circle… I sense things that are not there but once were. I walk in a circle….I lose my body and I become only spirit. I walk in a circle…I close my eyes and let my feet guide me. I walk in a circle....Am I visible now on another plain of existence?
Will I still be there walking in a circle even when I am gone?
A Place for Nobody
Installation, The Homestead Artist Residency, Willow, Alaska, 2010
Documentation by Faith Johnson
Interactive Sculpture, Made 2 Move; a mobile art exhibition of tiny works whose mission is to bring contemporary art to underserved communities, New York, NY, 2013
These headphones are made to enhance one's experience of their surroundings. Each headphone has a small opening at the far end away from each ear, thus allowing certain frequencies that are already in the environment of the wearer to be enhanced. These devices are meant to connect the user to their surroundings in an intimate way without isolating or disconnecting their experience from it's context.
Documentation by Faith Johnson and Leah Gauthier
Interactive Performance for: Grace Exhibition Space, NY, February, 2013
I ask each audience member to bring one or more fresh flowers to this interactive artwork. Audience members are then invited to help string the flowers into wreaths throughout the evening. Once a wreath has been finished it is given away to a stranger outside the gallery space. Participants who choose to give the wreaths away finish by sharing their experiences. It was revealed through this work that to give and to receive are actions deeply and unnecessarily complicated by our habits and social norms. However, when the act of giving is completed, a rush of joy was to be found for both the giver and the receiver.
Documentation Faith Johnson
Interactive Performance, MEME Gallery, Boston MA 2010
For this action I walk down Massachusetts Avenue and ask people to lean back to back with me until we find a balance and a connection.
Leaning back-to-back….finding a balance. A connection is reached with a silent negotiation of human contact.
I lean against a stranger until they are not strange….building an arc of trust through a gesture…..rediscovering trust in places where it seems hidden.
Space Other, Boston, MA 2008 (duration 15 hrs)
Sometimes I feel myself disappearing…becoming so small that I am
overwhelmed by feelings of powerlessness, and all I can do is breathe.
It is in these moments that I begin to find strength in the persistence of breath. During the exhibition I capture my breath by blowing into a clear plastic sphere. Throughout the exhibition the sphere gradually fills the gallery with my presence as it expands and takes shape from over 3,000 breaths. At the end of the exhibition the collected breath is released in a long exhale with the help of audience participation. By catching this breath I am able to understand it as a force and extension of presence, filling up the spaces that my body cannot.
Documentation by Chuck Chaney, Cathleen Faubert, and Darren Miller
An Interactive Performance for:
Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NY 2010 and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 2011
Video documentation by Faith Johnson
Photo documentation by Bob Raymond
Interactive Installation, Proof Gallery, Boston, MA 2012
For this interactive installation I was interested in the idea of creating a vortex of energy facilitated by my presence and continued through the presence of the audience. I have been fascinated by the energy vortexes in places such as Sedona Arizona and I wondered if humans could create an energy pocket through a collective intention. I created a delicate and intimate space out of thread and spent hours in the space meditating before opening the work to the public. The focus of my meditation was connection and healing in the broadest sense. When the space was open to the public I simply asked the audience to remove their shoes, enter the space quietly, and send or receive healing energy.
Documentation Faith Johnson
Performed In Collaboration with Leighton Collier Roux at: Mobius, Boston, MA 2012
University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 2011
Scope Art Fair, New York, NY 2010
Since June of 2010 both artists have committed to meeting each other psychically by designating a time and then focusing their intention on becoming close to one another as if they were occupying the same room despite the reality of being on opposite sides of the country in two different time zones. They have evidence of successfully connecting with one another through shared emotions, somatic sensations, and flashes of color, memory, and visual images of the other recorded through journals kept by both and then reviewed and confirmed at a later time over the phone.
When performed live one artist is usually present with the gallery audience while the other artist performs remotely. After the psychic meeting has concluded, the remote artist calls in and opens up the performance for the audience's comments and questions.
Through this project it is our hope to open up other senses of communing that may be dormant within us. Through our actions of transference we also hope to bring further understanding to ideas of presence, absence, and extensions of self. Most importantly we wish to create possibilities for deeper human connections with each other and the world around us.
Documentation Faith Johnson and Leighton Collier Roux
Interactive Performance for:
The Lumen Festival/Grace Space
New York, NY 2010
This is an interactive performance exploring the Jungian based idea of the collective unconscious as viewed through a spiritual and visual lens. I draw the outline of people’s bodies on the side of a building. The outline of our bodies acts as a metaphor for each embodied spirit. Drawn one on top of the other, each body outline maintains an individual and collective shape simultaneously.
Documentation by Faith Johnson and Adina Bier
Performance, FiveSevenDelle, Boston, MA 2009 (duration 1hr)
If my thoughts could be seen coming out of my head I imagine that they would spread out over space through my hair, making shapes and suspending me as one thought moves into another.
Documentation by Cathleen Faubert
