Name: Rory Golden
Project Title and Description:
Duty Free Ranger: Verde
A midnight protector of urban forests enacts rituals with trees and bushes on 14th Street.
Susannah makes objects from repurposed industrial castoff materials. Rory uses these as tools in midnight acts of propitiation and protection along trees and bushes on 14th Street as Official Protector of Royal Forests, or Verderer.
#dutyfreeranger fashion actions reflect on and play with questions around land use and natural resources protection, guilt, and hypocrisy in white capitalist hetero patriarchal hegemony. Is it possible to embody, satirize and, on a vibrational level, undo imperialism’s damaging effects?
How have you chosen to interpret the theme “SENSE”?
The performance incorporates ceremonial use of objects with visual, tactile, auditory, and olfactory components for communication. Visually, the clothing functions as a reworking of masculine, heteronormative and militaristic menswear aesthetic ideals in dandy Technicolor. Yet, in particular, working alongside plants and trees on 14th Street, the senses of scent and the sixth sense may pull ahead.
Why do you believe 14th Street is a compelling site for creative response?
14th Street offers a broad and deep cross section of populations, cultures and citizenry passing through. I’ve always wondered how the trees planted there survive or live amongst the onslaught of humanity.
What reactions are you hoping to draw from the public?
Rory:
On the one hand I say in Duty Free Ranger that Colonial history, fashion and white blindness are raw material for parody in my performative public interventions. I don’t know what I’m doing. Anything could happen.
And, I’m fascinated by the notion of a public that, though not noticing the performative actions of Duty Free Ranger: Verde, somehow registers the intent to undo centuries of damage on a vibrational level. Like an unconscious massive healing activity. Who knows what the trees will have to say.
