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Old Red, I Know Where Thou Dwellest
October 21, 2022 - August 27, 2023
Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA)
For red wolves, the state of North Carolina is both haunted and hallowed. The first court-recorded wolf bounties began here in 1768. Two centuries later, North Carolina became the first state to revive the species from wild extinction when two breeding pairs of red wolves were released into the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in 1987. Today, less than 20 red wolves make up -– what the U.S. federal government deems – a nonessential experimental population (NEP) on North Carolina’s eastern coast.
Eco-Political Artist, Lauren Strohacker expands this population through experimental installation and public art. Collaborations with Lisa Tolentino, the Wolf Conservation Center, and the North Carolina Zoo yield three new works debuting within and beyond SECCA. Leukos Lukos, “wild” LED light intrusions inhabit transition spaces of the museum – stairs, hallways, alcoves, overlooks – creating unexpected encounters. Such music as I have never heard, fills the sky above SECCA’s front lawn with red wolf howls. Ground Work, life-size projections of a red wolf pack, will recur at free, public twilight events held on the SECCA Grounds and throughout Winston-Salem over the course of the exhibition.
These works reflect Strohacker’s ongoing efforts to enfold ecology, politics, and notions of radical interspecies municipalism through her co-creative and site-responsive practice. Old Red, I Know Where Thou Dwellest imagines a landscape re-enchanted with red wolves – holding space to consider the social, political, and ecological processes of inviting “Old Red” home.
Press Release
Ground Work
8 channel digital video projection
2022
Ground Work is a series of free, public, outdoor projection events held within the species’ historic range, which includes nearly all of the Eastern/Southeastern United States. Life size video projections of red wolves become a visual echo of the red wolves making their last stand on the North Carolina coast and an invocation to redevelop equitable interspecies relationships between humans and red wolves at large.
Red wolves were filmed with special permission from the North Carolina Zoo. Ground Work is supported by the Culture & Animals Foundation
Leukos Lukos
LED (light emitting diode) strips, Arduino microcontrollers, computer-coded stochastic algorithms
2022
“...the Greek word for wolf, lukos, is so close to the word for light, leukos,
that the one was sometimes mistaken for the other in translation.”
Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men, 1978
Leukos Lukos is uncivilized decor. Contemporary floor lighting (typically decorative, controllable, peaceful, and predictable) is reimagined and “rewilded” as creative light intrusions – labile, ground-moving beings the length of wolves. This is not artwork that only represents animals, it moves as animals: appearing, walking, running, breathing, stopping, chasing, and retreating in unexpected ways. Thus, each encounter with Leukos Lukos is unique.
Leukos Lukos is made in collaboration with Dr. Lisa Minerva Tolentino, a computational artist, musician, and interaction designer. This project is supported, in part, by the Arizona Commission on the Arts which receives support from the State of Arizona and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Such music as I have never heard
3 outdoor speakers, recordings of red wolf howls
2022
“The wolves here give us music every morning, from six corners at once, such music as I have never heard…Not only can the skins of wolves and panthers be sold, but the government pays a bounty of ten shillings for each one killed.”
Spangenberg Field Notes, Nov 4, 1732, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina Volume 1 (1752-1771)
Red wolf howls once filled the skies above the majority of the country’s eastern and southeastern regions. Such music as I have never heard is a collection of red wolf howls activating a modicum of the species’ historic range. Red wolf recordings courtesy of the Wolf Conservation Center.