Environmental change inspires multimedia art performance at Story Mill
Mountain Time Arts has announced Standby Snow: Chronicles of a Heatwave, Chapter One. The new place-based project will premiere at Bozeman’s Story Mill grain terminal on Wednesday and Thursday, August 28th and 29th. Located at 1270 L Street, performances will begin at sundown each evening.
This intertextual work brings together video, architecture, music, and live performance to activate this rich and complex location, rife with historical narratives and environmental lessons. Standby Snow is being created by Ben Lloyd and Kelly Olinger of Comma-Q Architecture; Laine Rettmer, visual artist and opera director; MJ Williams, composer; Mary Ellen Strom, performance and video advisor; and Shane Doyle, Apsáalooke (Crow), writer and Native American Scholar.
The Story Mill grain terminal is located in a fertile valley with rich soil and a historic bounty of wildlife, including bison. Yet this location also holds the history of violent displacement of Indigenous peoples, rapid industrial and agricultural development, population growth, and the finitude of what was formerly believed to be an infinite supply of natural resources. By interrogating the site, Standby Snow will chronicle a history of European colonial domination that caused a cultural and ecological crisis in the region.
The method of research and production for Standby Snow understands collaborative inquiry as a way to generate new knowledges to address Southwestern Montana’s critical cultural and environmental concerns. This research-based project is being produced in dialogue with advisors from our region, including Native Studies Scholars, a fire scientist, an environmental scientist, a climate data analyst, ranchers, and politicians from Southwestern Montana. Standby Snow chronicles current climate realities in Southwestern Montana and speculates about possible methods of environmental regeneration. The work will examine the cultural and economic complexities of human values that shape restoration goals and practices.
Over the past four years, Mountain Time Arts has worked collaboratively with scientists, farmers, ranchers, conservationists, Indigenous scholars, and artists to address critical social and environmental issues and to engage our diverse community with a series of unique multimedia performance events. Standby Snow will focus on the devastating effects of fire and drought, and on the resiliency of people and place. Learn more about the project and participating artists at www.mountaintimearts.org.
Mountain Time Arts is a Bozeman-based nonprofit organization that produces inventive public art projects that enliven our relationships to the history, culture, and environment of the Rocky Mountain West. •