at the Academy of Natural Sciences – Drexel University, Philadelphia
View The Pine Barrens, a film by David Scott Kessler as well as experimental films and the Academy’s taxidermy dioramas from 1930s-50s and Pine Barrens specimens.
Started in 2012 by David Scott Kessler, The Pine Barrens Project assembled experimental ecological works by contemporary artists and musicians around Kessler’s perpetually evolving feature-length documentary “The Pine Barrens,” accompanied by a live score by The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra. These works were presented in museums, galleries, and most often in the forests, fields and bogs of the Pine Barrens in events entitled Middle of Nowhere.
This iteration of The Pine Barrens Project focuses on film and video works that illustrate particular relationships of people and artists to the natural world, including the tension in our growing uncertainty about the future of those relationships. Modeled on those artists who took their experiments in the Pine Barrens back to what we call “civilization,” the works in this show are juxtaposed by the Academy of Natural Science’s taxidermy dioramas from the 1930s–50s and presented alongside the Academy’s own Pine Barrens specimens.