Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This collaborative installation titled “Dead Trees” will present a poem by Ken Fifer within an outdoor site-specific installation by architect/artist Larry Mitnick. Our attempt is to move poetry off the page and into a corresponding three-dimensional physical experience, to give the poem spatial presence. Words meet and intersect the environment, the installation creating “rooms” for thought. The installation will provide an entry to an existing promenade/arts walk at the Abington Art Center in Abington, Pennsylvania, which already contains several architectural and landscape elements. “Dead Trees” will provide an entrance to this established sequence of objects, landscapes, and spaces encouraging their exploration by visitors. The pedestrian Arts Walk moves along this sequence, passing sculptures followed by a passage between two berms and through a stone arch ending in a stone tower. The sequence, however, lacks a defined entrance. By combining ars and techne we attempt, as in your conference focus,”an artfulness that can only be human, in the fullness of our species being.”