KiM WEST
UNFURLING THE OLD ZOO
An abstracted meander through color data mined from broadly reaching investigations into wanderings and imagined possibilities, this is a project very specifically about the evocation of flowers.
In the patinated ruins of the Old Zoo, sculptural fabric flow bunchings, a mural amassed from over 2,000 handmade ceramic pieces, and a tableau of amorphous flora forms, together form a project about the joyful evocation of flowers and color, wondering and wandering. Activated with site-specific, one night only performances by Heidi Duckler Dance and musicians Pauline Lay, Isaac Takeuchi, and Marta Tiesenga at the Old Zoo in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California on June 8, 2024.
2,540 handmade glazed ceramic tiles hang on the horizontal bars of the enclosure cages. The kinetic mural is a distilled abstraction of a day-dreamed, site specific palette.
1800 yards of tulle fabric bunchings, flows, piles, and suspensions on the grotto ruins.
Bathed in magic hour light against this backdrop and as the sun drops behind Bee Rock, Heidi Duckler Dance's choreography moves phosphoric luminescent performers in, amongst, and through the ruins, meandering the audience down paths of imagined possibilities, and whimsical notes float on the breeze and propel the journey.
Papier mâché forms, along with many more yards of tulle knottted into blobby poufs of color adorning dancers, together create a traveling tableau.
