Along the Erie Canal is a snake-like sliver of Western New York known as the Burned Over District; a thoroughfare for the occult; a Psychic Highway. 

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Psychic Highway (work in progress) is a multimedia-performance exploring the tensions between invisible forces and the material world. 

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Drawing upon the parallel history of new spiritual movements of 19th Century Western NY, and the rise of industry along the Erie Canal as a geological and imaginative framework, Psychic Highway digs into the layers of American nostalgia and American individualism to explore the relationships between Ideology, Disability, profit, power and ghosts. Collaging together emerging vignettes of movement, memory, and geological material we dissolve our eyeballs and transform into rocks. As rocks, we see through time, erode, and metamorphosize into new shapes. And from this vantage point we perceive how our present was shaped by both visible and invisible histories.

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Created by Shannon Brooks

Movers/collaborators: Alanna Bozman, Briell Giancola, Kimya Jackson, Leigh Huster, Ellen (LN) K Foster, Lu Donovan, Teresa Silva  

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Sound: Andrew Keller, Ellen (LN) K Foster, mx.dash

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Lights/Projection: Max Bienstock, Mycie Colodny

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Pre-show projection: Oona Taper in collaboration with Shannon Brooks, Mycie Colodny, and Molly. 

 

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Set Design/Production: Briell Giancola, Leigh Huster, Teresa Silva

Special Thanks: Rocks, Leah Stein, Max Bienstock, Courtney Partington, Maggie Mills, Hook&Loop, Rachel Gordon, Undue Burden, Oona Taper , Celeste Pulido Garcia, Benji Santos, Annie Wilson, Brandon Brooks 

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