CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
Due to ongoing COVID-19 related public health concerns, participating in Alluvium will be by appointment and limited to small groups of 3 people or fewer at a time. Please register here or email peter@amplifyarts.org to schedule a time to visit. Face masks are required.
Maps measure the distances between us. They delineate borders and symbolic separations drawn and redrawn to legitimize territorial expansion and archive our geographic alienation from one another. Made even more navigable by Global Positioning Systems that divert our attention from the Land to the screen, maps can invisibilize our physical relationship to the landscape, making it easy to ignore and easier to neglect.
How do maps measure our sense of place in and relation to Land, Water, and our neighbors, both human and more-than-human? How do they measure the boundaries of our interdependence and the complexities of place?
Alluvium, organized by Allis Conley and Corson Androski with support from Sarah Rowe, and inspired by a teaching exercise designed by Zoe Todd for her Indigenous Ecological Ways of Knowing course at Carleton University (Ottawa, ON), is not a map built for navigating or quantifying, but rather a map to "sensitize participants to the waterscapes [we're] situated in," and "expand awareness of indigenous territories beyond the abstract to more concrete/tangible factors." (Dr. Zoe S. Todd).
Visitors who register for Alluvium individually, or in small groups, will be led by a gallery attendant through a relational mapping exercise, adapted from Dr. Todd’s course, structured around small acts of remembering, recording, reorienting, and reconsidering our relationship to Nebraska’s Waters and the Indigenous territories we occupy. At the end of this exercise, each participant will place a notecard, inscribed with their memories, impressions, and experiences of Nebraska’s waters, on the gallery wall. Together these cards create a living collective archive of the waters that connect us, rather than the borders that separate us.
*A note from the organizers:
If you're unable to make it to the exhibit, we'd still love to have you participate remotely. Think of some connection you have to the watershed. This can include memories, relationships, experiences, or knowledge that involve places, events, or other living things. They can be positive or challenging, personal or broad. We're also mapping and discussing concerns, losses, and environmental injustices.
You can write as much as you like, or just share a brief title/phrase. Be sure to let us know approximately where on the map we should put this (if it's not obvious). Lastly, if you'd like to include your email, we'll send you a photo of your contribution in the gallery along with some notes about conversations in the gallery which it's been a part of.
To contribute to Alluvium remotely, please fill in the fields below and click the ‘Submit’ button.
About the Organizers:
Corson Androski is a researcher, conservationist, software developer, and photographer/filmmaker from Hutchinson, Kansas. Their work uses the concept of care—as labor, affect, and ethic, given/received by humans and other-than-humans, individuals and systems—to consider subjects like institutional medicine alongside state ecological regulation, and beyond their respective margins, emergent communities of illness alongside informal conservation of the small, overlooked ecosystems of weeds and fungi that spring up in the seams of our patchwork flyover states.
Allis Conley graduated from Grinnell College with a Bachelor’s in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies. After spending some time in Colorado, they happily moved back to Omaha, their hometown. As a community manager, fiber artist, and facilitator, they thrive on reshaping or designing new systems on a variety of scales. They’ve been practicing fiber arts for 15 years, but above all else they love dabbling in new skills and collaborating with other artists.
Sarah Rowe is a visual and performance artist in Omaha, Nebraska. Her work addresses issues of self-identity and exploitation of natural resources. She re-imagines traditional Native American symbology to fit the narrative of our modern cultural landscape. Her work opens meaningful cross cultural dialogues by utilizing methods of painting, casting, textiles, performance, and Native American rituals in unconventional ways. Rowe is of Lakota and Ponca descent. She co founded Sweatshop Gallery and has exhibited her work nationally.
About Generator Grants:
Amplify Arts’ Generator Grants program program lends space and support (financial and otherwise) to Omaha-area artists throughout the process of organizing, marketing, and mounting a curated exhibition outside the context of larger institutional systems.