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

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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