Organized in partnership with Great River Passage Initiative

LOCATION: Pickerel Lake at Lilydale Regional Park

Tia-Simone Gardner’s UnVessel

One last chance to experience Tia-Simone Gardner’s experimental site-based work exploring landscape photography and the Mississippi which draws on historical connections between Blackness and the river.

Taking the form of a floating camera obscura—a small box, experienced in total darkness, that projects an image of the outside world onto the walls of its interior—in the shape of an inverted ship, UnVessel seeks to unsettle the way we passively observe and experience the river and the body’s relationship to it.

Monica Moses Haller’s Listening to the Mississippi

Check out a “listening kit” and hear underwater and aboveground recordings of the Mississippi, gathered in 2015 by artists Monica Moses Haller and Sebastian Muellauer, shared in this iteration as a composition by Michi Wiancko and Judd Greenstein. Moses Haller’s Listening to the Mississippi asks listeners to orient themselves to the river through their sense of sound. It invites a perceptual adjustment to the river and attunement to critical histories, present and futures both human and non-human. 

Storytelling with Beverly Cottman

From 1:00-1:30 p.m. and 2:00-2:30 p.m., Beverly Cottman will share African and African American folklore related to water as a keeper of heritage and culture. Beverly Cottman is an interdisciplinary artist creating at the intersections of literary, visual, and performance art.  As storyteller, Auntie Beverly, she delivers wisdom of the ages by telling stories, folktales, and fables rooted in African and African-American traditions as well as cultural tales from around the world. Auntie Beverly presents an enthusiastic and interactive storytelling program suitable and adaptable for any age or setting. Her storytelling sessions pass on values, celebrate culture, and invite listeners to participate in the telling. Her workshop sessions support and encourage participants to create compelling narratives and stories that educate, enlighten, and entertain.