Anna Piva, Edward George: Promised Lands
Title:
- Promised Lands
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Venue(s):
Medium:
- Mixed media performance presentation
Artist Statement:
Promised Lands is a multimedia project exploring the idea of the promised land in relation to accounts of contemporary and historical migration.
The promised land is the founding trope of the migrant adventure, which confers a larger than life, metaphysical dimension on often life threatening journeys into newness. It is a figure of speech and writing, thinking and feeling, faith and necessity, found in popular and folk cultures both sacred and secular.
Communicated through sonic, textual, and visual material, it is an idea whose force and resonance is contingent on questions of culture and religion, politics and history, desire and necessity. The promised lands of slaves and former slaves in 19th century America were Liberia, Sierra Leone, California and Chicago. The promised lands of Jewish Zionism are the contested territories of Israel and Palestine. Ethiopia was among the promised lands of the churched slaves and colonised peoples of the Caribbean. Oil rich Sudan is among the promised lands of 21st century capitalism. For African asylum seekers and displaced Eastern Europeans, the promised land is Western Europe.
With Promised Lands Flow Motion propose a creative rethinking of the idea of the promised land – a transformation of the idea from a geographical space of nation and region, singularity and sovereignty, into a multiplicity of zones, located as much beneath as above the land, as present in the soul of the song as in the will of the state, and whose identities, locations, and protagonists shift and change over time.
