Above and below: Photos from Neversink Transmissions, an art installation in Sullivan County. Image provided by Ellie Irons and Dan Phiffer.
To find avant-garde art this weekend, you don't have to go any farther than the Neversink Valley. On Sunday, a multimedia installation called Neversink Transmissions is opening in the town of Denning in Sullivan County. The installation is the brainchild of Brooklyn artists Ellie Irons and Dan Phiffer, who spent the summer as fellows of the Wildcat Fellowship Program, a two-week residence that is funded with help from the Neversink/Rondout Stream Management Program.
As Wildcat Fellows, Phiffer and Irons built a driftwood sculpture, hacked together a micro-radio station, and gathered documentary footage for an online gallery of interviews and photos of Neversink Valley residents. The result is a faux cell phone tower made of river driftwood that transmits audio and photos of Neversink oral and visual history to all radios and mobile phones within shouting distance.
You can see one of the photos Irons and Phiffer took above, and hear a three-minute sample of the "transmissions" that emanate from the project on this week's edition of the Watershed Post radio show.
To see the entire project in action, go to neversink.info or to the Wildcat Fellowship Project's blog. You can meet Irons and Phiffer in person this Sunday, October 2, at the Old Stone House in Hasbrouck, New York for the official unveiling of their work.
Gala Opening for Neversink Transmissions, Old Stone House, Sunday, October 2, 2011, 3pm - 5pm. 282 Hasbrouck Road, Hasbrouck, NY. For more details, click here.
