LUAG@Lunch: "Cavernous Bodies" with Artist Georgia B Smith

Join us for a conversation with Artist Georgia b. Smith as she talks about her series "Cavernous Bodies" and her collaboration with Lehigh students during her residency with Zoellner Arts Center.  Combining her background in dance and metal fabrication, Georgia B. Smith's "Cavernous Bodies" is a research experiment in wearable silicone objects that inflate and expand using soft robotics techniques. Set to a droning, mechanical soundtrack and the clicking sounds of her robotic pieces, her work includes the organic-looking pieces, as well as videos showing them in use on a human body. Inspired by butoh and the notion of transforming bodies into inanimate material, Smith says she worked backward from those ideas to create her pieces, which attempt to breathe life into inanimate objects as a way to approach thoughts about the relationship between humans and the built environment. It's a relationship Smith sees as less separate than we make it — "the unnaturalness of the natural and naturalness of the natural" — as she describes it.

Light lunch will be provided. Event is offered in partnership with Zoellner Arts Center.  

Please register in advance here.

Georgia b. Smith creates sculptural environments which she activates through performance.  Her sculptures become prosthetic parts of performers' bodies or perform themselves through motors, lights, and sound. The film is often the end point of each project. The film becomes an extension of the choreography and captures a world where the performers, props, and stage are all equally active participants in the performance. Georgia b. Smith is an interdisciplinary artist. She was the artistic director of a dance company NOT for reTALE. She is a former member of the dance company Leimay, premiering "Borders" at BAM Fisher in 2016. Georgia b. is working on her series Polite Structures and recently completed a European Tour in Berlin, Prague, and Amsterdam. Georgia b. received her MFA at the University of Michigan where she has launched her newest series "Plastic Abodes" and "Cavernous Bodies."

Image: Still from "Cavernous Bodies" Performance by Georgia b. Smith