_springs from Fernanda D'Agostino on Vimeo.
Springs is the first of three video performance installations created for along the Willamette River by Mobile Projection Unit, here with sound design by Crystal Cortez (Quartez). The sonic realms Crystal creates manifest through the collection and transformation of everyday field recordings into playable digital instruments. Through this process she explores and reconfigures the context of our sonic environments to reveal new possibilities.
A special healing action was commissioned from Yunuen Rhi of Los Angeles and Mexico City. Yunuen appears with an offering and as a diviner in the first segments of this distillation. All of our collaborators at this site were asked to respond to the idea of a hidden spring or headwaters. After the initial prompt performers were given great autonomy over the shape their actions would take. Yunuen chose to work with cinematographer Eduardo Trejo along the banks of the Tijuana River where there is a small area of the channelized river that has survived in its pre-colonized state. That small oasis became a representation of the possible for Yunuen and Eduardo.
Yunuen uses we/our pronouns. In keeping with our identity as a multifaceted being Yunuen's actions distill many inspirations. Yunuen's most recent project that TBA viewers may have seen was the Border project #XMAP; In Plain Site. Here is a link to Yunuen speaking about that work on instagram.
Additional participants who also appear at other sites along the river, are Sahra Brahim, Yaara Valey, Jaleesa Johnston, and Sophia Wright Emigh. Sarah Turner and Linda K Johnson also appear in the video at Springs. Digital spells mixing our collaborators' actions with elements of the natural water cycle were made through creative coding by Fernanda D'Agostino and Sarah Turner. This project is an inflection point, or eddy, in an ongoing stream of collaborations and friendships.