Bird and Lava (Scott Joplin)
Artist Torkwase Dyson
Curator James McAnally
Address
2008 St Louis Ave
St. Louis, MO
Site Description
St. Louis Place Park was created in 1850, and is located on a long, narrow tract of land north of the site of the old reservoir. The park provides playgrounds, basketball courts, horseshoe pits and spray pools to the surrounding neighborhoods.
Artwork Details
About the Artwork
For Counterpublic 2023, Dyson’s immersive architectural and sonic installation, Bird and Lava (Scott Joplin), was directly inspired by the legacy of Scott Joplin and ragtime music, a syncopated blend of classical piano and African polyrhythms with mathematical precision evolved in response to the oppressive conditions of minstrel shows and credited as the first truly “American” musical form. Bird and Lava (Scott Joplin) likewise created a syncopated experience of the landscape with multiple vantage points along its structure, immersed in the discordant environment of St. Louis. Further, Bird and Lava (Scott Joplin) aimed to make transhistorical connections between Black liberation strategies formed to refuse slavery’s spatial violence and its structural continuities in the present ecological crisis. The work continued to expand on Dyson’s goal to speak to the poetics of both the quotidian and the existential realities of climate change.
