Vessel for Haiti II, co-conceived by Catherine Tutter and my dear friend Anna Wexler, is an interactive, community-engaged performance that examines healing action through the aesthetic and ritual sensibilities of Haitian Vodou. The focal point and driver of this event is a ceremonial vessel adorned with a band of paper yarn; a continuous skein of drawings and texts written with healing intentions for Haiti in response to the catastrophic January earthquake. Created in the spirit of Paper Prayers by audience participants, individual paper sheets were fashioned into yarn through the act of spinning as part of Mobius Drawing Marathon 4, January 2010. In Vessel for Haiti II, participants engage one-by-one with individual artists in intimate acts of storytelling, remembrance, writing, spinning, and sewing: an occasion to reflect on the losses and continued suffering endured by the people of Haiti. Personal encounters, narrative, ritual, and the medium of light bring this durational meditation into conversation with the human condition and the nature of relationship and ethics. Awaiting imminent transformation, the vessel occupies the center of the world in this community-engaged performance.
Featured performers:
Margaret Bellafiore
James Ellis Coleman
Burns Maxey
Cathy McLaurin
Mari Novotny-Jones
Joanne Rice
Catherine Tutter
Jane Wang
Anna Wexler
