The Lunatic Project (Current Project)

In 2026–2027, I will be on a year long sabbatical leave from teaching to develop The Lunatic Project, an international, interdisciplinary artistic collaboration with lbs/sq″ Performance, a Toronto-based experimental dance company directed by Gerry Trentham. I have been invited to join a team of artists, performers, dramaturgs, filmmakers, and digital designers to help imagine, build, and test an innovative traveling performance installation: a mobile, digitally-equipped “greenhouse” that transforms into a performance space touring between theaters, parks, urban spaces, and rural landscapes.

This project explores what happens when performance, sculpture, media, poetry, and digital technology are housed within a single sculptural “box”—a system that can open, unfold, illuminate, and engage audiences in unexpected places. During the sabbatical year, I will research and design the sculptural and aesthetic elements of this moving vessel, bringing my experience with organic and industrial materials into conversation with live performance, projection, and sound.

The work will unfold through a series of international residencies in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Stamford, New York; and Toronto, Canada, and Clarion, Pennsylvania, where the team will collaboratively research, build prototypes, test digital environments, and conduct audience feedback sessions. Following these residencies, I will return to my Pennsylvania studio to continue developing sculptural components that will eventually tour within the Lunatic Project’s mobile performance architecture.

This sabbatical marks an exciting next step in my long-term commitment to interdisciplinary, cross-border collaboration, following past projects including The Apology Project and the Arrivals Legacy Project. Over the coming months, this page will document the development of The Lunatic Project — from research and sketches to prototypes, installations, travel notes, residencies, and reflections on collaboration.

The Artwork

The work is an evolving sculptural instrument designed for live performance within The Lunatic Project. It consists of eight black walnut boxes housed in a larger portable box—a vessel meant to travel, to open, to reveal, and to sound. Each of the small boxes bears appropriated symbols linked to four archetypes that
recur within the project: the Alchemist, the Cowboy, the Herbalist-Healer, and the Hobo.

These archetypes function as cultural carriers. They move across bodies of knowledge: ancient Greek elemental symbology meets the periodic table; cattle brand marks echo long histories of land and labor; medicinal plant drawings intersect with earth, water, air, and fire; and the transient signs used by 20th-century railway wanderers chart forms of survival and access.

Some boxes contain hidden speakers, allowing sonic impressions of the archetypes to emerge. Others are built to hold miniature projectors, casting images outward as the performer interacts with them. The boxes can be shifted, lifted, opened, arranged, and carried, inviting inquiry into what knowledge we keep closed and what we reveal.

This piece is a beginning — a springboard for future vessels, future movements, and future combinations of symbolic and embodied memory.