Seashell Resonance: Sasha Wortzel and Kristan Kennedy in Conversation
Sasha Wortzel and Kristan Kennedy were matched by Oolite in March of 2020 on the day the US shut down and declared a national pandemic. What followed was a year of virtual meetings and conversations which set out to imagine, plan, and produce Wortzel’s exhibition, Dreams of Unknown Islands. The artist and curator worked together in the spirit of radical honesty and vulnerability to create an exhibition that honored Wortzel’s ambitions and considered the mood and tenor of the times. Wortzel’s exhibition deals with subjects of ecological precarity, temporality, memory, loss, and the transformative power of collective mourning. Flooded with immersive sound, symbolic gestures, and flickering films emanating soft glow, the installation creates a space of possibility that does not deny the struggles we face. For this program, Wortzel and Kennedy meet from their respective coasts as they always have, via zoom to share a conversation with the audience about their process, the artist’s work, and how to be human in an inhumane time.