Blog: River Charrettes

Here is a conversation about art as experience and as a form of thinking predicated on the agency of those who touch it.

Elegy for the Anthropocene

August 15, 2018

This article about The Quiet Circus appears in the January 2018 issue of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Writing is dramaturg and director Jessica Rizzo who attended many of the weekly performances, River Charrettes and Reflection Events that comprise The Quiet Circus.

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Experience and Reflection Video

July 31, 2018

  I am excited to share Experience and Reflection, a video about The Quiet Circus. It is the closest thing to a bird’s eye view of this project with its multiple layers, phases, and programs. My hope is that, together with the River Charrettes video posted a few months ago, this video will communicate the values and proposals…

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River Charrette Video

April 16, 2018

    Jillian Jetton and I have been working with Byron Karabotsos on a video about the four River Charrette events that functioned in relationship to the three phases of weekly events at the Washington Avenue Pier. In looking through this footage I was moved by just how much happened, and the hugely different expressions…

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River Charrette #4: Island of Signs at Fairmount Water Works

November 1, 2017

  This weekend my mother Carolyn Brick and I perform Island of Signs at the Fairmount Water Works as our final River Charrette event with Philadelphia Contemporary. It is related to the Island score that happens as part of The Quiet Circus every weekend at The Washington Avenue pier in South Philly, but it is also…

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River Charrette #3: Martha McDonald at Andalusia

June 6, 2017

  River Charrette #3 takes place in the pastoral setting of Andalusia along the Delaware River. It is just a short distance upstream from the commercial recycling operation that was the site of the previous River Charrette at RAIR. Andalusia, by contrast, is the bucolic, ancestral mansion and estate of Nicholas Biddle, one of the…

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River Charrette #2: Billy Dufala & Maiko Matsushima at RAIR

April 10, 2017

  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…

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River Charrette #1: Eiko Otake and Alan Greenberger at Bartram’s Garden

September 20, 2016

  Please join us at Bartram’s Garden this Saturday, September 24th at 2:30 pm for The Quiet Circus: River Charrettes, a collaborative project by Headlong and Philadelphia Contemporary to engage and explore the city’s maritime, industrial, and creative heritage. Eiko Otake, an artist whose work and ideas are a profound touchstone for me, will perform…

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