Sign in

SPREAD THE WORD!

Join the Conversation!

More to say than fits
in a comment box?

-Suggest a featured project
-Submit your own story
-Respond to a blogpost
SPEAK & RESPOND

 

500 Miles/500 Stories

500 Miles/500 Stories


Dance Exchange project under the artistic direction of Cassie Meador

Cassie Meador and the Dance Exchange are currently building an interactive 500 Miles/500 Stories component of D|Lab that will launch in April 2012. In the meantime, read about the How To Lose a Mountain project that the Stories website will compliment and sign up for our email list to stay in the loop about the launch of this virtual map and story collection site!

Meat, milk, produce, grain; heat for our houses; power to run cars and computers: Behind every product we use is a story that has been lived and a distance that has been traveled. Behind every resource we consume are communities, lands, and processes that often exist beyond the scope of our awareness. What happens when the source of a resource is examined? Could knowing the story behind our stuff change our relationship to process and use of product? Who gets to tell the story? As the source of art, what can the body reveal through the telling and retelling of stories?

In Spring 2012, Artistic Director Cassie Meador, will lead a 500-mile walk from where she lives in Washington, DC to the sources that provide energy to her home. This self-powered journey will take her to an electrical plant in Virginia, and then on to the terrain in West Virginia where mountains are being lost as coal is extracted through mountaintop removal to provide fuel to the Virginia plant’s turbines. Meador will encounter other energy sources along the route including a wind farm and nuclear plant. Along the way, Meador, Dance Exchange artists and partners such as the US Forest Service and the Girl Scouts will engage communities in workshops, residencies, and interactive panels, to examine resource use and its impact on our lives and the environment.

The walk will be documented and reflected through a virtual component called 500 Miles/500 Stories featured exclusively here on the D|Lab. This virtual feature will allow people to follow the walk, hear stories from communities along the route, and contribute stories about energy use and its impacts on our lives.

Check back on April 3, 2012 for the launch of 500 Miles/500 Stories.