Swept Away
A Series of Performances by Allison Halter
October 30 – November 1, 2020
dieFirma East, Shelter Island, NY
dieFirma invites you to Swept Away, a series of mystical performances taking place on Shelter Island October 30th–November 1st. With sound and movement, Allison Halter will transform dieFirma East, bewitching the audience under the light of the full moon with new rituals using a collection of her handmade broom sculptures.
Transforming found branches, Halter crafts brooms ranging from the familiar to the truly weird, with multiple heads and looping bristles. Common household objects, when at rest, propped in some kitchen corner perhaps, brooms imply performance; they’re possessed with a readiness to clean and clear. Brooms also perform in a world less mundane: They have a long history in spiritual thought—from familiar images of witchiness to various space-clearing and healing techniques. “There’s magic all around, even in something as mundane as sweeping the floor to change the energetics of your space,” Halter says. “That’s radical because it’s accessible to anyone who wants to pick up a broom.”
At once recognizable and peculiar, Halter’s brooms rely on centuries’ old craft traditions that have often been replaced by disposable mass-produced plastic tools. These hand-sewn brooms endure and transform with use, overtime acquiring a relationship between tool and user.
Whether fully functional or seemingly defying traditional earthly purposes in mutant form, Halter’s brooms embody these timeless devices’ many uses. With a sound and movement, Halter will cast a unifying spell in each performance. “I'm always looking to create connections between myself and others, to weave a web between disparate people and experiences,” she explains. “Those are the instances when I feel the most magical and successful as an artist.”
Swept Away is an opportunity to clear cobwebs literal or spiritual, to heal, to let us fly, briefly, elsewhere.
About Allison Halter
Allison Halter is a Brooklyn-based conceptual artist interested in systems of power and the acquisition and abdication of control in projects spanning performance, video, sound, sculpture, and photography. Halter’s projects have been exhibited and performed nationally at Echo Park Film Center (CA), Basilica Hudson (NY), Walker Art Center (MN), Knockdown Center (NY), Flux Factory (NY), Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival (IL), Artists’ Television Access (CA), Experimental Film Festival Portland (OR), Ditch Projects (OR), and internationally at Galerie im Körnerpark (DE), dOCUMENTA(13) (DE), Titanik Galleria, (FI), MUU Performance Voyage (FI), and d'CLINIC Studios (SI). She received her Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.
Broommaking: Process
All About Brooms
Allison Halter: BROOMS
Rebecca Cooney: DRAWINGS
Whisk Brooms
Allison Halter created a set of whisk brooms in conjunction with the exhibition Swept Away: A Series of Performances by Allison Halter, on view at dieFirma East from October 30 – November 1, 2020
Each whisk broom comes with a copy of A guide to your broom, featuring drawings by Rebecca Cooney.
