Morgan Thorson Projects: Three Darknesses

I am seeking support for the research and development of a new multidisciplinary project, Three Darknesses. Exploring the subject of darkness, with its many meanings and representations, this outdoor live-art installation will be presented in Minneapolis in February 2023. The goal is to raise $4,000 by the end of the year. Your tax deductible gift will support the initial phase of research.  

In January 2021, research for Three Darknesses will begin with being alone in darkness in Iceland, where the night sky is present for 18 hours a day.  During a residency at Korpúlfsstaðir,  I will incubate visual and physical materials through my embodied experience of sub-arctic winter darkness.

Darkness is powerfully embedded in western culture as a metaphor for evil or wickedness. That representation supports a binary relationship between light as good and dark as danger. My journey into darkness interrupts my own conditioning, my white privilege, to not see the destructive power of this metaphor. Simply, darkness is robust, and not defined by the absence of light, or anything. My question is: what catalytic force, truth or attention will emerge from darkness's extended presence and how will that feel? As vision is lulled and other senses kick in to compensate, how will non-visual senses overwhelm my own thinking around darkness and guide a new body of work?

Dance is my primary medium, yet this research is thick with exploration in various media. As I grow into the labor of videography, editing, moving, writing and sensing, I am committed to dance and believe I am rooted in my history by holding the content of this exploration in my own body. While I don’t want to reinforce individualism, solitude now is important. I feel a need to put myself closer to a dying world—oppression, climate crisis and pandemic. As I deepen my relationship literally to being outside, I am thinking of "outside" as a public community and audience. Adapting to the changing circumstances of our world, I make granular shifts towards the idea of making work both for people and the outdoors.