Meeting Ground
A place where people, etc., meet; a gathering place.
figurative. An area of knowledge, interest, etc., held in common by two or more people or disciplines; a shared or uniting factor.
Oxford English Dictionary
Roberts, Montana
45º 15’ 48” N, 109º 12’ 4” W, 100º E, 0º N
Elevation: 5200 feet
Meeting Ground is a collaborative collection of projects that considers the ground as a point of entry to shared space where interconnection between earth and self, individual and other is made visible. Artists, curators and activists Susan Main and MJ Neuberger invite participants to look down and attend to the spaces they walk upon.
Individual and collective actions in parcels of equal and finite measure are interwoven across distance and international boundaries while ritual impressions made in soil suggest reconnection to indigenous bodies. Haptic and visual experiences combined with geolocation and context encourage deeper exploration of the ground we hold in common.
The meeting of a human body and a specific body of ground brings together a complex of phenomena, materiality, culture, history, orientation, attention, and vulnerability. How do we explore, measure, collect, and re-materialize the impacts and imprints of first-hand and mediated connections between ground and human bodies and privilege the perspective that both are active agents in exchange? How do we bring people to the ground and the ground to people through simple, attentive acts?
Meeting Ground investigates the efficacy of human/ground connections to affect the imprint of trauma and personal/cultural/political orientations to land, behavior, attention, and policy. In a time of pandemic, environmental, social, racial and economic stresses and inequities, limited face to face physical connections, the domination of the virtual in everyday life, touching the ground can re-center attention and shift perspective. Why is that? Conducting this research will allow us to explore the limits and possibilities of Meeting Ground as a theoretical, practical, political, and aesthetic base for future projects that will grow a community of artist and non-artist participant/researchers.
View and participate in current Meeting Ground projects:
