BEFORE THE DUST SETTLES
2024
The Naumkeag scourer is the particular part of a machine that my dad uses to reshape the soles and heels of shoes during the work of resoling. The leather traditionally used for a longsole has undergone a treatment to render it hard. As a result, when scoured down, the workshop at large becomes adorned with a light coating of leather dust. My grandad used to mix this same dust with the earth when feeding his fig trees. They have grown well and have outlived him. A cutting from one lives at my parents’ place.
And so, before the dust settles, you are invited to negotiate a multitude of objects, spaces, sounds and performance in an old warehouse which used to function as a leather skin market in the 1930s. Let each enmeshed world intersect and overlap as an instrument of play grows within this space.
Rubble, leather dust, a fig tree, leather scraps, Goodyear welting thread, shoe sole rubber, oil on wood, oil on shoe sole rubber, oil on copper pipe, copper pipe, vices, fabric, discarded piano fragment, projected digital stop motion, and an audio recording of a piano improvisation.
Get in touch if you wish to see the full length film of the performance in the warehouse.
