SALT: Shaking the tree theatre

undercurrent

SALT, Shaking the Tree, May 1st - May 6th 2018

SALT is a multimedia presentation of 8 installations exploring the idea of civil disobedience, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's Salt March speech and the effect his words had on a multitude of people.
Audiences will be free to wander around STT’s warehouse and observe the installations which will be placed around a central artwork created from salt. Installations will be a mix of live, ongoing, repetitive action, film, or static visual art. Shaking the Tree’s Artistic Director, Samantha Van Der Merwe will orchestrate the experience, and flow of the evening, working with each individual artist/artist pair to best express their final vision.

undercurrent, Installation by Namita Gupta Wiggers

Materials: Khadi cloth, fabric remnants, discarded textiles from the Goodwill, paint, Borax

Centuries ago, merchants from Europe traveled with the Trade Winds, picking up treasures from India and China along the way. Introduced to cotton by Arab traders, the ocean provided a liquid path that circumvented the Silk Route’s path over land. The European merchants waited, impatiently, at the far end of their journey until the winds shifted, allowing them to travel precariously back along the route, trading and exchanging textiles and stories, secrets and coveted goods until they reached Europe. Europe craved cotton. Europe craved control of cotton.

Crossing the ocean on the other side, they landed on a landmass they did not know. Here, another kind of cotton grew, in a shape and form better suited to mass production and industrial processes. They came. They destroyed communities and land, pushed surviving indigenous families further and further away. They traded the finest cotton from India for humans in Africa, moving this enslaved and shackled labor force to this other place, where they grew an empire based on cotton that happened against nature, against the Trade Winds, against humans.

The tides bore witness then as they do now, moving in and out, carrying stories, people and objects from place to place. The tides touch the edges of land masses, moving on or against beaches and cliffs. These soft and hard edges of the sea are made by nature, unlike the national borders humans create to claim place, space, nations. As we continue into an era of the largest refugee crisis in decades, perhaps ever in human history, undercurrent is a still, silent moment to contemplate what it takes to leave every person and everything known and familiar and move - by force or by will -- to another place. Here, salt, ice, and cotton are metaphors and materials, and bear witness to revolution, atrocity, and the everyday.

Special thanks for assistance in making this work from Charissa Brock, Mina Gupta, Samantha van der Merwe and the Shaking-The-Tree crew. Readings excerpted from “America” by Richard Blanco, “Who Am I, Without Exile” by Mahmoud Darwish, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, “Immigrant Blues” by Li-Young Lee, Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie; “On Immigration,” by Prageeta Sharma, “Empire of Dreams” by Charles Simic, and salt. by Nayyirah Waheed

Namita Gupta Wiggers is most American when abroad, and most Indian when at home. Daughter of immigrant parents from India, and parent to two third generation Americans, she is a second generation American married to a man of British, German and Dutch origin whose family left Europe before the American Revolution. Based in Portland, OR, Wiggers is a curator, educator, and writer. She directs the MA in Critical and Historical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College and Critical Craft Forum (Facebook Group and iTunes podcast).

Roster of Artists

Lava Alapai & Alex Ramirez
Bobby Bermea & Jamie Rea (featuring Caitlin Nolan)
Namita Gupta-Wiggers
Sabina Haque (featuring Michele Ainza, Subashini Ganesan & Simeon Jacob)
Infinit.Indigos
Anya Pearson (featuring Kayla Banks & Tammy Jo Wilson)
Christopher Ringkamp
Beth Thompson

NOTE: Mural of people gathered is by Bapu A. Khare, my grandfather.

Creative Team

Annalise Albright Woods, Ted Gold, Meg Nanna, Trevor Sargent, Natasha Stockem, Samantha Van Der Merwe