Directed by JG Everest
Created by JG Everest and Bethany Lacktorin, with Jais Gossman
MY OCEAN is an outdoor, site-specific sound and performance installation at Ordway Prairie Nature Preserve in Pope County, MN. Performance Artist Bethany Lacktorin leads audiences on an hour-long walk through a carefully composed environment of sound, live music, and storytelling. The pathway runs through a diverse range of ecological habitats, as well as the ruins of Fort Lake Johanna, and the site of Lacktorin’s childhood home, which had previously been her great-grandmother’s General Store. Along the walk, Lacktorin shares stories ranging from her family history and personal memoir, to naturalist interpretations of the local ecology, Dakota history and Immigrant legends.
Throughout each performance, Lacktorin and cast are accompanied by a live music and sound installation composed and performed by JG Everest with the My Ocean Orchestra and Choir, a collection of local and national musicians and singers, including members of the Prairie Fire Lady Choir, and the Twin Cities Sacred Harp Singers.
REVIEW / REFLECTION:
This Prairie Has Always Been Her Ocean (excerpt)
Ben Weaver, MN Artists
September 6, 2016
“It is roughly 117 miles, almost directly west of Minneapolis. A pothole prairie. Once, it slept beneath rumbling glaciers. Before that, it was the bottom of an ocean. Now, it is an ocean again — an ocean of grass and oak and wildflowers. Birds flicker. You can hear waves if you listen. There was a time we all understood. The wind rushing about in a red cape. The voice of the land is peace. And balance. Our origin is not unknown. When in doubt, just listen.
We come up from the dirt and down from the sky, moving forward by the expression of water and sunlight, passing through the hands of everything living. We all share this ground. Even if humans have forgotten, the stones that line the river remember. The bones in the fish swimming past remember. The dirt remembers. The Dakota remember. The wind doesn’t forget.” Continue reading…
