Assistant Professor in MFA, Julie Poitras Santos
Assistant Professor in MFA Julie Poitras Santos' site-specific visual practice takes many forms, including installations, video, performances and public projects. Much of her recent work uses walking as a means to create community, investigate richly sited ways of knowing, and narrate new territories. This fall, Julie will be teaching ‘Walking Art History’ as an Academic Studies class.
green is the forest we wander (a locus, an echo, an amble)
One of twelve artists recently selected to create work for the 2017 IPark Site Responsive Biennial in East Haddam, CT, Poitras Santos was in residency for three weeks this spring making "green is the forest we wander (a locus, an echo, an amble)", a 15-minute site-specific audio walk that invites participants into the forest imaginary populated by things magical and unseen. Using cues in the landscape as guides to research, on-site investigation, and poetic inscription, the audio essay wanders through Mie’s Trail, a reclaimed gravel pit and natural preserve on the IPark grounds. Poitras Santos discusses this work along with an upcoming project in Sweden in a recent interview for Konst i Blekinge (Art in Blekinge). You can listen to the podcast here. (the interview is Swedish, with Julie talking in English).
Map & Universe
In August, Poitras Santos will be joining the Milena principle and presenting her work along with other artists and experts in diverse fields for “Made of Walking, La Romieu," an international forum focusing on dialogues between performance, art, literature and new media related to walking practices. The forum follows the theme of “listening to the ground,” honoring the work of Pauline Oliveros. Additionally, an upcoming essay this fall in Living Maps Review details “Map & Universe,” a walking based artwork she created in southern Sweden in May 2016.
Closer to home, a 50-page catalogue detailing last summer’s PLATFORM PROJECTS/WALKS 2016 (funded by SPACE Gallery through the Kindling Fund) was released in April with an accompanying public walk through the Portland peninsula. The catalogue contains photos, essays by Poitras Santos and Barbara Louder, and walk descriptions from the fifteen artists who were invited to participate in the initial project.
green is the forest we wander (a locus, an echo, an amble)