Turning The Tide In Asbury Park
Siren Arts Series Runs 7:30 pm Thursdays Thru Aug 23 On Second Avenue Beach
From a dance with sails made from plastic shopping bags to a meditation and umami tasting, Turning the Tide is a visual and performing art series inspired by the Jersey Shore’s most valuable resource – its waterfront, beaches and ocean.
Each Thursday, foreign born visiting artists from across the nation have been presenting environmental sustainability interpretive pieces on Second Avenue beach.
But behind the scenes, Siren Arts residency program has unfolded into a collaboration with local creatives, such as Tina Kerekes from Danny Clinch’s Transparent gallery and restaurateur Marilyn Schlossbach.
For example, at 7:30 pm Japanese native Naoko Wowsugi presents Umami Taste Development Center.
Umami, Wowsugi said, is one of five basic taste buds. While most are attuned to sweet, sour, bitter, and salt, it’s the receptor that responds to the glutamate found in seaweed, meat broths and fermented products that will be the center of the program.
“I wanted to present a program that reflects the local community’s everyday culture,” the DC based artist said. “In playing off the foodie culture, the meditation and Umami tasting ceremony will awak a sensitivity that only 37 percent of the population has.”
For weeks, Wowsugi and Schlossbach have been in collaboration on which items they will use from a local organic farm.
“When I do this kind of collaboration with a local community, it’s so important to be engaged in some sort of relationship,” she said. “I came for a visit a few weeks prior and we have been going back and forth via email [regarding an umami broth recipe].”
Turning the Tide marks the second year of Siren Arts, a local summer residency and exhibition program that showcases emerging visual artists, predominantly from the northeast corridor.
The program is the brainchild of Victoria Reis, executive and artistic director of Transformer – a 16-year-old non-profit visual arts organization based in Washington, DC.
This year’s series features seven visual artists, including Argentinian born Stephanie Mercedes, who
used plastic trash bags collected from the Asbury Park beach to create large scale sails.
The DC-based artist and avid sailor said the inspiration for her program came from swimming off local shore. She recalled that while floating in admiration of the scenic beach day, a plastic bag entangled around her foot.
Mercedes used Danny Clinch’s Transparent has her headquarters during the week prior to her July 19 program. There she ironed the plastic bags [collected by Kerekes and local youth] with paper. The end result was poetic interpretation of the importances of environmental sustainability through dance with members of the Asbury Park Technical Dance Academy.
Wowsugi’s Aug 2 presentation marks the halfway mark for the Siren Arts series.
On Aug 9 Israeli born Tamar Ettun’s Part BLUE is a colorful and moving installation that incorporates everyday objects for her commentary on stillness and primal empathy. The Brooklyn based sculptor and performing artist created BLUE as part of a teratology that addresses emotion – Blue/empathy, Pink/aggression, Yellow/desire, Orange/euphoria.
Aug 16 features NYC based artist Ed Woodham’s The Keepers, described as a durational public performance, a ritual advocating that the natural environment has been disregarded. The Keepers are protectors who maintain the balance of nature and appear when the environment – in this case the ocean – is threatened.
And then on Aug 23, Mexican born and Baltimore based Hoesy Corona presents Climate Immigrants, a performance piece that incorporates a series of colorful art ponchos to reflect on the impending plight of climate-immigrants worldwide.
Turning The Tide is a collaboration with Monmouth Arts. The series continues 7:30 pm Thursdays through Aug 23 on the Second Avenue Beach. For more information, click here.
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