Sugar Maple Glacial Lake Station
installation images, Hampshire College Art Gallery, Amherst MA (2025)
an instance of the larger project Inside the Breath (In Network Time)
This installation presents excerpts of the texts, videos, songs, sounds, and artworks from Inside the Breath in the form of a regional information-reflection station, one of a distributed system of stations across the planet in INT. This environment is designed to encourage reflection on the histories, ideas, and feelings of INT society so that we can continue to inhabit these ideals.
Artworks, Texts, sound/music, and video by Sara Smith
Spanish translations by María José Gimenez
Singing by Barbie Diewald, Jules Skloot, Karinne Keithley Syers, Meredith Bove, Rebecca Pappas, Sara Smith, Tyler Rai
Dancing (in video) by Barbie Diewald, Karinne Keithley Syers, Meredith Bove, Sara Smith
Subjects:
Anzaldúa, Gloria -- Philosophy
Borderlands -- Environmental aspects
Borderlands -- Political aspects
Cooperative societies
Distributed cognition
Quorum sensing (Microbiology)
Host-bacteria relationships
Geobiology
Octopuses
Solidarity
Inside the Breath (In Network Time)
(2017-present/current)
exhibition installation images, A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton MA (2025)
Inside the Breath is an ecotopian exploration of the biological properties of interconnection, and a long project set in I.N.T., the calendar era of our interspecies planetary future. The world of INT is rooted in the writings and archives of the queer Chicana writer and activist Gloria Anzaldúa as modeled by octopuses, made possible by bacterial communication networks. The increased multisensory and communicative faculties humans have in INT enable greater organizing with and accountability to all planetary creatures and systems. We are the climate.
Created with many collaborators, including Meredith Bove, Kathy Couch, Barbie Diewald, María José Giménez, Karinne Keithley Syers, and the singers of the Network Time Small Human Chorus. Project research was made possible by the archivists who maintain and ensure access to Gloria Anzldúa’s archives at the Benson Latin American Collections at the University of Texas Libraries and at UC Santa Cruz Special Collections & Archives.
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WE DO THE MOLECULAR DANCE OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM
HACEMOS LA DANZA MOLECULAR DEL ACTIVISMO ESPIRITUAL
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Read: Excerpts from Our Texts
Listen & watch: Future Oral Histories: bedtime story (excerpt, Shift Again)
Listen & watch: Interknowing (Memory) (excerpt, Shift Again)
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BRING US A LOWER LOVE
BRING US A LOWER LOVE (support)
BRING US A LOWER LOVE (support)
Subjects:
Anzaldúa, Gloria -- Philosophy
Borderlands -- Environmental aspects
Borderlands -- Political aspects
Cooperative societies
Distributed cognition
Geobiology
Host-bacteria relationships
Host-bacteria relationships
Octopuses
Solidarity
performance-screening image, "Shift Again" (2022)
an instance of the larger project Inside the Breath (In Network Time)
Future Oral Histories, audio installation, Interstellar Nepantla exhibition, Movement Gallery, San Antonio, TX (2019)
an instance of the larger project Inside the Breath (In Network Time)
Soundscores for Living Scenery/Soundscores for Remembered Landscapes (ongoing)
Soundscores created to accompany specific landscapes. Some are to be listened to on-site, while others have been made in honor of and to recall a particular place at a particular time. soundcloud.com/saralsmith/sets/soundscores-for-living-scenery
The most recent series was supported in part by APE Gallery in Northampton MA. Please check their site for information about the 2024 zine release and listening tour. apearts.org/soundscores-for-living-scenery
Subjects:
Environmental music
Sound design
Sound recordings
Florence Rice Hitchcock and the Theory of the Soft Earth
(2012-17)
Created with and performed by Candice Salyers.
An exploration of the physics and geologic properties of interconnection and indeterminacy. Also a "nearly true" story about a forgotten nineteenth-century geologist who dedicated her life to deciphering and channeling her prophetic visions into a theory of planetary interdependency. Also a tale of how a valuing of solidity and static measurability can soften into a greater understanding and acceptance of change as the only true constant.
Florence's fictional Soft Earth Theory predicted future scientific understanding (quantum physics, chaos theory, environmental science) and forefronted social and ecological responsibility. It was constructed from pieces of spiritual and scientific ideas across cultures and time periods, and stretched from the 4th century forward to meet current understanding of the role of uncertainty in how the universe functions, and the effects of humans on the earth and other species.
This project was made possible in part through a creative research fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society, and by the archivists and librarians who maintain and provide access to those collections.
Subjects:
Imaginary biography
Quantum cosmology
Social ecology
Chaotic behavior in systems
Causality (Physics)
Geology, Stratigraphic--Anthropocene
Mercy
Florence Rice Hitchcock and the Theory of the Soft Earth [about this project]
artists' book with stereo-viewer reels
An artists' book and stereo-viewer exploration of the physics and geologic properties of interconnection and indeterminacy, based on a "nearly true" story about a forgotten nineteenth-century geologist who dedicated her life to deciphering and channeling her prophetic visions into a theory of planetary interdependency. Also a tale of how a valuing of solidity and static measurability can soften into a greater understanding and acceptance of change as the only true constant.
You Got Eyes
(2016)
Made in collaboration with film & video artist Adam R. Levine
An experiment in movement and single-frame video inspired by photographer Robert Frank’s book The Americans.
Performance by Aretha Aoki and Sara Smith
Subjects:
Frank, Robert, 1924- Américains
Documentary photography
Photography -- Political aspects
United States Population
United States -- Social life and customs -- Pictorial works
The Candidate is Absent
(July, 2016)
A collaborative project of the Pinecone Finance Reform Party staff:
Bernadine Mellis, Data Visualization Technician
EE Miller, Action Research and Outreach Director
Gina Siepel, Chief Operational Engineer
Sara Smith, Archivist of Revolution Messaging
Frustrated with the state of U.S. electoral politics, we created a pop-up campaign headquarters in the A.P.E. Gallery (Northampton, MA).
From the project website:
"The Pinecone Finance Reform Party is a forest-floor organization inspired by historical desires and disappointments to conduct local action research with a global vision. We are manifesting a candidate who speaks with us, as we imagine a campaign and a world we can build together."
Subjects:
Political campaigns--United States
Elections
Democracy
Dreams
KINEBAGO
A print forum about dance and movement research in New England
(2010-2017)
1: Nell Breyer, Sara Coffey, Krista DeNio, Katherine Ferrier, David Hurwith, Ana Isabel Keilson & Daniel McCusker, Tiffany Rhynard.
2: Romain Bigé, Selene Colburn, Krista DeNio, Arthur Fink, Heidi Henderson, Annie Kloppenberg & Lauren Simpson, Dahlia Nayar, Peter Schumann/Lubberland National Dance Co.
3: Ellen Smith Ahern, Chris Aiken, Lorraine Chapman The Company, Hannah Dennison, Cassie Peterson.
4: Kathy Couch, Cookie Harrist, Kinodance, Adele Myers, Cassie Peterson.
5: Deborah Goffe, Eliza Larson, Candice Salyers, Sandra Wieser/The Living Library.
6: Billbob Brown, Katja Kolcio, Polly Motley, David R. White.
7: Charlotte Brathwaite, Christopher-Rasheem McMillan, Kelly Silliman, Wendy Woodson.