Invitation to “Surrender at Tunnel Brook”

Artist:   Xavier Cortada

Title (Aqua):  “Surrender at Tunnel Brook”

When: Sunday, July 22^nd, 2012 at 10am.
Where: Tunnel Brook Road (west of North Woodstock, NH), White Mountain National Forest
Who: Cortada, the forest’s hydrologist and 100 participants.

Artist’s Statement:

                 Path dwellers heed:

Water carves the earth; 
Sends the residue downstream and into the sea.
Sun, winds push the waves.

The ocean, heated, torments the skies;
Cycles its fury back to the land.
Carving anew. 

Surrender at Tunnel Brook is a participatory performance where individuals will engage in the futile attempt of rerouting the flow of a brook at White Mountain National Forest to conditions prior to the natural disturbance caused by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.

Participants will also create a ritualistic installation lining up 100 white flags amid boulders along the path where a man-made road ran prior to it being washed away by Irene.   Placed sequentially, the flags will recall the traditional process of charting the path of a hurricane as points on a map.

White Mountain National Forest hydrologist Sheela Johnson will join artist-in-residence Xavier Cortada in addressing the audience, explaining the forest’s watersheds, the storm event and why the forest has decided not to rebuild the portion of the road washed away by Irene.

For more information contact Frumie Selchen, Executive Director,Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire (Frumie@aannh.org) or see www.xaviercortada.com/event/tunnelbrook