12:33
2023
architectural projection venue on the Everson Museum facade, and installation at Kestner Gesellschaft.
Hysteria is an original video by The Institute of Queer Ecology (IQECO). In this work, the institute uses image, movement, and sound to construct an ecofeminist retelling of the poorly understood “dancing plagues” that swept through Europe between the tenth and the seventeenth centuries. The afflicted dancers are subtly recast as pointedly subversive agents entangled in environmental contagion and contamination that drive these wild, manic uprisings.
Shot in and around Syracuse as part of Light Work UVP’s Residential Media Art Commission program, Hysteria features many iconic Central New York locations, including the Syracuse Metro Water Treatment Plant on Onondaga Lake, Pratt’s Falls, and Stone Quarry Art Park.
Costume design and dance scene for “Contagion” and the “River Spirit”, dance scene choreographed by Nadia Hannan
hand painted costume for Zodiac Man
Dancing plagues (also referred to as dancing mania, choreomania, and tarantism) were spontaneous social phenomena in which groups of people, at times in the thousands, danced erratically and without restraint. The mania affected people of all ages and genders, and they often danced until they collapsed from exhaustion or suffered injury and even death.
installation and costume design for “River Spirit”
additional costume design for afflicted townspeople in Hysteria
costumes for Hysteria in installation at Kestner Gessellschaft.
