Ghost Orchid: Fever Dream, 2021
Dual-channel video projection with refracted light and surround audio. Designed and debuted with the support of Project Row Houses Houston on the occasion of Round 52: Gulf Coast Anthropocene, Curated by Ryan N. Dennis and Dr. Willie J. Wright.
In Ghost Orchid: Fever Dream the elusive flora Dendrophylax lindenii is personified as an apparition, oracle, and provocateur that positions the viewer as an orchid hunter trespassing the swamp. Throughout the video, the Ghost Orchid delivers poignant and sage-like monologues about climate change, humanity’s dominion over the wetlands, and its impact on species’ survival. Rendered as a fever dream, footage of dancers donning a ghost orchid costume is cut to atmospheric singing and field recordings made in the South Florida Everglades. Drawing from true stories of orchid hunters and their desperate obsessions with capturing ghost orchids in the wild, the videos are paced and structured so that they appear and disappear throughout the space, never to be fully grasped.
SINGING: Tanzanight // COSTUME FABRICATION: Savanna L. Stephens + Ryn Wilson // DANCERS: Rebecca Allen, Vanessa Centeno, Ann Glaviano, Andrea Peoples, Abby Russell + Katherine Schepker // STAGE LIGHTING DESIGN: Matthew Ishee + Steve Schepker