Lydian Junction: Born for Nothing

Lydian Junction (New York, NY) creates intense, irreverent, interdisciplinary live art at the intersection of performance, video art, installation, music, and dance. Lydian Junction was born in 2011, when New York based director Sarah Cameron Sunde brought together dance artist Dages Juvelier Keates, composer Christopher Berg, actor Oliver Burns, and video artist Karla Carballar to experiment with performance forms and content. Since then, Lydian Junction has developed site-specific performances for New Georges, Cornelia Street Cafe, 3LD Art & Technology Center, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, [the end], Hybrid Theatreworks, Figment Festival on Governor’s Island, chashama in Harlem, and the [UN]Fair Art Show. Their work has been featured in CHANCE Magazine, a new printed photography journal about theatrical design.

While in residence at The Watermill Center, Lydian Junction will develop their current work, BORN FOR NOTHING, responding to the collection and grounds. On November 1, they will present a site-specific showing of the work.

BORN FOR NOTHING is an interdisciplinary live art event structured as an investigation into methods of survival. Loosely inspired by themes in Knut Hamsun’s novel HUNGER and humanity’s current relationship to water—which experts predict could soon engulf us—Lydian Junction plays with the mundane and the extreme. With a quirky, metaphorical point-of-view, they explore the value (and dangers) of adhering to routine, ecstatic embodiment of the ephemeral, and the struggle (and joys) of attempting to survive as a solitary individual in solidarity with a group. BORN FOR NOTHING asks: do a person’s minute actions lead to monumental changes for a civilization, or are we just born for nothing?

Guest artists for Lydian Junction’s Watermill residency are: Joshua Dumas, Natalia Roumelioti, Anna Kiraly, Laura Mroczkowski, Tegan Ritz McDuffie, and water expert Edgar Westerhof.

For more information on Lydian Junction, please visit www.lydianjunction.com