MILDRED'S LANE / 2021
Landscape / Democracy / Wellness /
in an age of Coronavirus Horror
2021 is the year to concentrate on healing. Our sessions this summer will not take the usual form. Contributing resident-artists-in-complex(ity) will come and go, blurring time for fellows to concentrate on wellness. We have alchemists, naturalists, gardeners, and Yogis in the landscape. Our daily schedules are emergent. There are dozens of collaborations to take part in; but, is there something more pressing to desire from Mildred's Lane? Contact us.
We welcome letters of interest. Reserve your space. We are accepting Applications Now—limited space from April through November.
More dates and details forthcoming. Our schedules are subject to change due to Coronavirus.
MAY/JUNE
WORKSTYLING the WILD
Donna Cleary, Juliet Dunn, Jeffrey Jenkins, Joe Lerro, Barry Puett, Rachael Schmoker, Laura Silverman, and others to be announced.
There is a sleeping, shady garden at Mildred's Lane. We let it go wild for several years; too heartbreaking, competing with varmints destroying our work. Reclaiming it has taken time, we are nearly there. Previous Wilding fellows rehabilitated the soil, priming the garden for a new beginning. Others ripped out the invasive species and leveled the site. We are rethinking how to coexist, allowing a vibrant community of flora, fauna, and creatures sharing and turning it into a wellness program. We are working in tandem with the Outside Institute, foraging the deep forest. Listen to wisdom from the non-humans, master gardeners, botanists, beekeepers, landscapers, and herbalists as we take field trips to fantastic hikes in the woods. Let's get down and dirty with daily events, replanting a garden of medicinal rhizomes, roots, flowers, and herbs; foraging-digging-rearranging-building-planting- swimming -- come workstyle the wild with us.
JUNE
SILVER – IRON – LIGHT
Noah Doely and others to be announced.
Set in the landscape with an extravaganza of 19th and 20th-century equipment, are facilitating a series of plein-air tintype, cyanotype, and anthotype processes using various materials; hand-coated plates, paper, fabric, and plant-based pigments. You may bring your own equipment or learn to use ours. These alchemical processes combine science and wonder; collaboration and experimentation will be part of events and activities throughout the session. Participants will set up a photography studio in the field for processing and development. The work will culminate in an exhibition at The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space in nearby Narrowsburg, NY.
JULY
FOREST – BODY – CHAIR
Gina Siepel, Sara Smith, and Kate Wellspring.
A tree becomes a chair and enters our lives as an intimate partner. The relational dynamics between the forest, the human body, and the wooden chair provide an entry point for exploring nature and culture's mutuality. In the domestic environment, chairs are utilitarian objects for resting the body and are social facilitators. As we know them, Chairs can also be poorly designed for the human body, causing a variety of physical problems. Multi-modal investigations of vernacular American furniture design will form the basis for experimenting together with these potentials and challenges through the framework of sustainability.
Explore Mildred's Lane's forests with a field naturalist, practice and study somatics and ergonomics with movement facilitators, and source wood directly from the site for greenwood chair construction with a woodworker. We'll conduct research to develop unique, experimental chair forms that actively consider sustainability in the forest, body, and domestic sphere. No previous experience with movement or woodworking is required. We will end the session with an exhibition/installation/event open to the public.
AUGUST
ORDER OF THE THIRD BIRD: ATTENTION LAB
To be determined.
Indiscreet friends of the Third Bird Order continue their investigations into experimental protocols of Practical Aesthesis and various tactics for Sustained Attention. The Attention Lab is part guerrilla seminar and part meditative/ kinetic practicum. A discipline of the senses is pursued; the conditions of attention are investigated. Beginning with available traditions and protocols of the so-called "Birds," our aim will be to develop and test new durational practices of attention.
SEPTEMBER
BIBLIOPHANTICS
Featuring special author appearances to be announced.
An intensive Reading Retreat. Enchanting stays in the Mildred's Lane Library, with volumes to consume, quietly -- aloud -– socially– privately. We will take Field trips to second-hand bookstores, collecting more books. Silent periods of reading grow into evening socials, library games, and authors' performances in the height of autumn.