Séance for Dead Horse Bay

Séance for Dead Horse Bay (2016-2022) is an unbridled mashup of impulses, affinities, and collaborations. First, the animation honors the non-human ghosts living across New York City’s industrial waterways and specifically references the history of Brooklyn’s Dead Horse Bay. Through the 19th century and into the early 20th, the bay was a dumping ground for bodies from neighboring horse rendering plants that manufactured glue and fertilizer. Second, it examines Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion studies from the 1880s and the development of cinema out of the love of horses, money, and the science of vision. Third, it showers love on Shirley Clarke’s Bridges-Go-Round. Fourth, it is a product of Albena Baeva’s Solidarity Machine, an AI instruction device that builds on Fluxus scores to question received notions of belonging, order, and hierarchy. Finally, it is a collaboration with composer Andrea Williams, whose score invites all the witches.

The project has evolved from a video sculpture made in 2016 for Marie Lorenz’s Flow Pool installation to a single-channel animation for Albena Baeva’s Solidarity Machine in 2022.