At our second River Charrette on Saturday, visitors participated in an intimate Silent Walking Tour through the grounds of a construction waste recycling facility in northeast Philadelphia that processes 450 tons of material a day. Passing sorting piles, operation facilities and an open field overseeing the Delaware River and the city of Philadelphia, the tour physically mapped both the constructed and natural environment we live in.
The walk was followed by an interactive Performance Dialogue performed by visual designer Maiko Matsushima and RAIR’s co-founder Billy Dufala with a 5-ton waste excavator. The Performance Dialogue drew on Landscape, which calls on stillness and perception to examine interrelationships between landscape, animate and inanimate material and the human body. At RAIR, Maiko and Billy (operating the excavator) took turns arranging materials curated from the waste stream, and their bodies, in relation to this unique landscape. The Performance Dialogue contemplated, on a larger scale, the interplay between humans and machines and the culturally shaped landscape.
Afterwards, visitors were invited to play the game on their own with smaller materials and to join in conversation with Headlong artist David Brick and performing participants Maiko Matsushima and Billy Dufala about their experience arranging materials for The Landscape Game at RAIR.