LoopCurrent is a performance installation that envisions humanity's environmental impact on the planet and an irrevocably altered future. Using textiles, movement, sound, video, and seismology, LoopCurrent constructs a world unearthed by archaeologists long after we are dust. This future relic appears now as a transmitted warning, as time-traveled evidence of a disaster, an SOS.

LoopCurrent's structure is determined by sound and seismographic measurements of the earth's vibrations relative to human movement patterns. This data was recorded with portable seismographs and specialized microphones in locations experiencing high occurrences of human migration due to war and extreme climate change. The seismic measurements, rendered as waveforms and spectral frequencies inform the work's improvisational movement score and textile design.

Other critical aspects of LoopCurrent are its garments and woven tapestries. Constructed from fabric printed with designs comprising water and migration pathways, the garments are survival suits engineered to protect our future bodies as they navigate an increasingly treacherous world. LoopCurrent's woven tapestries tell a story of future cities with collapsing infrastructure entwined with artifacts from the extractive industry: oil rigs, transmission towers, and the earthly wounds left by mining.

Completing the work is Desire Lines, an autonomous video installation comprising figures in survival suits moving through shifting landscapes. The video's sound score is created from field recordings captured on location with hydrophones and seismic microphones. Desire Lines is a meditation on how borders, both visible and invisible, reorder space, memory, and the possibility of passage.

The first iteration of LoopCurrent was developed during a residency at ART LAB Wyspa/Wyspa Progress Foundation and was made possible thanks to the Between.Pomiedzy Festival and IKM (Urban Culture Institute, Gdańsk, Pl), the New York State Council on the Arts and The Canada Council for The Arts. LoopCurrent received a 2024 grant from the Map Fund, and was further developed during a residency at Baryshnikov Arts in New York City, May 2025. LoopCurrent will have its North American premiere in November 2026 at the Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center in the Bronx, NY.

Maya Ciarrocchi

Maya Ciarrocchi