The tall willows, rocky banks, and thick meadows that stretch along the rolling Brandywine provided a sonic backdrop for a sound piece on the region’s cultural and natural history, composed by the artist and broadcast on provided radios along the trip. Naturalists from the Brandywine Conservancy provided commentary on the flora, fauna, and history of the region along the way.

The artist’s 12’ punt, a small boat constructed with the public over the course of his residency at the Brandywine Museum, accompanied the trip.

Book designed in collaboration with Partner & Partners, map designed in collaboration with Brandywine Conservancy’s Michele Gandy.

Dawn School is a participatory art work that takes the form of itinerant classroom performances planned for a 10-year duration (2010-2020). It engages with contemporary and historical ideas of nature, time, labor, ecology, media, and the depletion of resources through the extractive processes of capitalism.

The basic instructions for the piece are always the same: “Wake before dawn. Take a walk. Watch the day emerge. Discuss.”

Prior Dawn Schools have investigated social and labor relationships in the industrial infrastructure around Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY; the effects of closing a Ford plant in St. Paul, Minnesota; and signs of de-gentrification in the East Village.  In the Summer 2011, Dawn School was held at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASSMoCA) at North Adams, MA, at the invitation of Bureau for Open Culture. This work included a visit to Specialty Minerals, a quarry and mineral processing facility in neighboring Adams, MA. 

The most recent iteration—held as part of the exhibition Con•Tin•U•Ums curated by Patrick Jaojoco at the former Pfizer pharmaceutical factory in Brooklyn—touched on the issues of fatigue, exhaustion, overproduction and over-medication in contemporary life.  The assembled group of 10 or so participants met at the former Pfizer plant at 4:45 am, and proceeded to take a silent, meditative “sound walk” around the building.  We tuned in to the sounds of the building itself—a humming machine—and the city as it stirred awake in the early morning light. 

We then proceeded into the building to tour spaces once devoted to the production of drugs, including Viagra, and discuss texts by Lewis Mumford on the emergence of commodifiable “factory time” during the Industrial Revolution, and Jonathan Crary’s 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. 

Participants talked about their sleep and work patterns, and their own exhaustion as artists, activists, and media producers coping with the expectations of an “always on” and “always plugged in” world.  The specter of the global toxico-temporal biopower regime of Pfizer, “one of the world’s premier biopharmaceutical companies,” hung heavy in our imaginations as we toured FDA clean rooms and laboratories reminiscent of recent science fiction movies like Alien.  Interestingly, these spaces are currently being converted into “incubator spaces” for food startups and catering kitchens in what is envisioned as the world’s largest hub for food startups. Thus we were experiencing not just a disused factory, but a transition in the making.

Dawn School asks participants to think about how our patterns of behavior are largely constrained and shaped by infrastructure and architecture, and how we might reuse or remake given or inherited structures and environments to be more equitable, just, and sustainable. 

Dawn School VIII was presented as part of the exhibition con•tin•u•ums (time beyond lifetimes) curated by Patrick Jaojoco. The former Pfizer factory at 630 Flushing Ave. and the gallery in which con•tin•u•ums (time beyond lifetimes) is presented are ADA accessible.

Prior Dawn Schools have investigated: the social and labor relationships in the industrial infrastructure around Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY, the closing of a Ford plant in St. Paul, Minnesota, and signs of de-gentrification in the East Village.  In the Summer 2011, Dawn School was held at MASSMoCA at North Adams, MA, at the invitation of Bureau for Open Culture, which included a visit to Specialty Minerals, a quarry and mineral processing facility in neighboring Adams, MA. In 2017 Dawn School will be held as part of the exhibition con•tin•u•ums (time beyond lifetimes) curated by Patrick Jaojoco.

Wake before dawn. Take a walk. Watch the day emerge. Discuss.

Alarm:

Dawn Alarm

—

Dawn School 8: Dawn School to the former Pfizer Building, NY (2017)

Dawn School 7: Dawn School to Newtown Creek, NY (2015)

Dawn School 6: Dawn School to San Pedro, CA (2014)

Dawn School 5: Dawn School to Specialty Minerals, Adams, MA, with MassMoCA/Bureau for Open Culture (2011)

Dawn School 4: Dawn School to the East Village for Psygeoconflux festival (2010)

Dawn School 3: Dawn School to Minneapolis Airport (2010)

Dawn School 2: Dawn School to Prince Edward Island (2010)

Dawn School 1: Dawn School to School of the Future, Brooklyn, NY (2010)

Preamble:

“The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.

As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold.

The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.”

~ The Waves, Virginia Woolf