About

Summary Rewilding: Alive in the Churn, Providence Public Library's fall exhibit, will open on Wednesday, October 13th. A collaborative project between PVD Young Makers and Providence Public Library, Rewilding: Alive in the Churn will transform the Library's exhibition gallery into an interactive biome for artists and experimentors, creating a physical and virtual space that is iterative, collaborative, and ever-changing. Join us to explore, experience, and experiment with ways of being in a world that is in flux.

What is Rewilding?

Rewilding: Alive in the Churn is an interactive installation involving PVD Young Makers, 9 local artists, and the Providence public. The installation is located physically in the 3rd floor gallery of Providence Public Library and digitally on various platforms.

Like the urban landscape being retaken by plants, a process known as rewilding, we find ourselves leaving behind our traditional roles and lives and returning to a kind of wildness to stay alive and lively in the churn: the obsolescence of many established social norms in the face of Black and queer uprisings, climate changes and a global pandemic. In this exhibit, we invite local artists, documentary film artists, public humanities scholars, and the public to come participate and purposefully reflect on this process of rewilding with us.

 

Rewilding: Alive in the Churn invites the Providence public and 9 artists to transform the gallery space through installation, performance, sound design, video projection, etc. Rather than the transformation having a period of time in which it is showcased, then taken down and reset for the next artist, each artist is asked to enter the space as it was affected by the previous artist, to respond to the space with whatever thoughts and histories and materials they bring with them, and to leave whatever mark they will for the next artist. This creates a space of shared and layered history that continually builds upon itself. Artists are invited to alter the space and the transformations that came before them, just as they must concede that their alterations may be further transformed after they leave.

On the days that aren't dedicated to the invited artists, the public is invited to interact with and change the space as well. Materials will be provided and guests can bring their own. On the days the artists are scheduled, the artist can choose to invite the public to witness, participate, interact, etc, or choose to share their work another way.

 

Rewilding: Alive in the Churn will exist digitally as much as physically. The digital gallery offers a metaspace of further exploration and play. Nate Goncalves will be lead documentarian, further transforming the physical into digital through his textural and paintery photography and videography. Sia Karpee, a PVD Young Makers intern, will conduct interviews with the invited artists and any interested public participants. The invited artists will be asked to document their time, transformations, and thoughts in whatever form they choose, be that photography, video, sound recording, written text, etc. A hashtag and public photo gallery will allow the public to share their documentation as well. A Meeting Owl Pro 360 camera and microphone will collect a panoramic timelapse of the space as a whole, while also providing a speaker for any sound design, which offers an avenue for the digital to affect the physical, perhaps by allowing the public to submit sound files to be played in the physical installation. The digital gallery will also offer space for play, through easter eggs, clickable objects that lead to hidden links, a shared whiteboard, an 8-bit model of the Providence Public Library, etc.

Rewilding: Alive in the Churn will be an 8 week installation from October 13th to December 11th. The installation space will be built in the gallery before October 13th by the PVD Young Makers (PVDYM) interns. The first four days the installation is open, PVDYM interns will do the first transformation. Then, each invited artist will be scheduled for two days in which they can work and transform the space, perform their piece, interact with the public, etc. There will be two days after each artist’s scheduled dedicated days in which the installation is open to participation by  the public, and then the next artist will have their two days. The week of 11/29 to 12/4 will be a slow deconstruction of the installation space, during which the gallery will remain open to the public, as a continuation of the philosophy of continual history. The week of 12/13 to 12/16 will be a showcase of extracted artifacts from the installation, cased in the Providence Public Library glass displays.

Our process for engaging artists exemplifies the goals and practices of the project. Three of the organizers will each invite an artist; each of the invited artists will invite another artist; each of the second generation of invited artists will then choose an additional artist, for a total of nine artists. When extending their invitations, the organizers and artists will seek to include a range of experiences, demographics, ages, preferred media, and fields of study. We are not specifying any prompt, nor any particular style or genre of artist. Our definition of "artist" is generous, broad, and soft-edged.

These nine are only the artists who will be scheduled by name, but we invite anyone interested in interacting with and impacting the space to consider themselves an artist and come participate. An artist is anyone who has anything to express, and they are invited into the installation space with total autonomy, but not total control. The invitation is to come into a space already marked by those who came in and tried to build before, with the understanding that others will come and try to build their own after. 

 

Rewilding: Alive in the Churn embraces the realization that we do not create from a blank slate, that any potential for the future will be created and recreated from what has come before. It’s an opportunity to experience a more truthful process of how life, community, and history are built: all at once, all on top of each other, all in different directions, and with less time than you want. It’s about the violence of the reset, and the spaces that are built with an understanding and acceptance that they will be altered. Rewilding: Alive in the Churn seeks to evoke today’s feelings of instability as well as the continual build-up of a longer history, and to open the doors to everyone to fully participate.

The Guest Artists

Nine artists will participate in Rewilding and document their experiences on this site. We wanted an organically developed cohort, so we asked three artists to each invite an artist they thought would be interested in the project, and then we asked those three artists to invite an artist.

Fatema Maswood	invited ➫	Cai Diluvio	who invited➫	Kei Soares Cobb
Ricardo Maxime	invited ➫	Brooxana Pierre	who invited ➫	Tiffany Devonish
Holly Ewald	invited ➫	Andrew Oesch	who invited➫	Charlie Best

Rewild with Us

REWILDING IS IN DEINSTALLATION AND REIMAGINING.

The exhibition will reopen in its new form on Monday 12/13! Please visit us then!

Rewilding is both three-dimensional and virtual. The public is welcome to add anything to the website: please fill out this form to add to the website

 

Thank you to our generous donors!