Preservation  

Preservation is a multimedia collaboration between artist & filmmaker Tracy Maurice and drummer & composer Tommy Crane that immerses the viewer in the mysteries of the natural world.

"Preservation explores the ever-evolving understanding of nature as a word, a concept, and a relationship by juxtaposing analog and digital; live and recorded; raw and mediated art forms. Maurice and Crane sought to create a liminal space in which two concepts can coexist, the deeply rooted idea of nature as immemorial and the emergent concept of nature as constructed, choreographed, and projected. Preservation’s most direct expression of this coexistence is the intermixing of analog and digital technologies throughout the project."

—Christopher Wagenheim

Live Film 

Maurice’s 45 minute experimental film is a pure embodiment of this concept in both form and content. The work leverages analog techniques and dark-field microscopy to capture the transformative, mercurial movements of water-based chemical reactions and soap bubbles. This material exploration is juxtaposed with dance choreography— in collaboration with Amy Gardner, that ruminates on time, space and mortality, all of which is explored through the primordial potentiality of movement. The dancers float in space and create a celestial thread that runs throughout the film. The film was inspired by Maya Deren’s The Very Eye of Night and the work of SFX visionary, Douglas Trumbull. While The Very Eye of Night was shot exclusively on a white background, presenting itself as a photographic negative, Maurice chose to shoot her film entirely on a black background, creating images that appear weightless. Maurice’s piece ultimately realigns darkness as something transcendent and intimately tethered to nature, not an absence of it. Crane’s score reflects these themes via an amalgam of analog synthesizers centered around live drumming. Crane's background in jazz and improvisational music are deftly applied to cultivate dynamic, ambient soundscapes and drones. Preservation’s initial incarnation was an an audiovisual live performance, commissioned by the Lincoln Center Atrium in 2017. Similar to the mercurial nature of the subject matter itself, the project has continued to develop into new forms since its inception. While Maurice has expanded and recut the film, Crane refined his didactic, exploratory original score, recording it as a full-length album that was subsequently released on vinyl. The digital/analog hybridity of the score—and its sonic musings on the essence of nature—is further heightened by the analog recording format, a nod to the importance of the tactile experience, in an increasingly digital world. 

Installation 

The 16mm Installation is a seamless extension of Preservation’s contemplations on the essence of nature and being. A microcosm of experiments in form. The short film was edited by Armen Harootun, who is known for his work on Beyonce’s Lemonade and Sampha’s Process. Anchored in the slightest whisper of a narrative, the film uses a triptych aesthetic (in which the center panel outsizes the side panels) combined with the sculpted physiques of the dancers, the abstraction of microscopy, and the very nature of the moving image as an art form all its own, to create an aesthetic untethered from time and place— the boundaries that categorize art as distinct epochs and mediums begin to break down. Everything, and nothing, become natural, simultaneously. 

Artist Book

The artist book, co-released with the album, is a collection of photography by Tracy Maurice. The book was created in collaboration with singer-songwriter/writer  Juliana Daugherty  and graphic designer  Frédérique Gagnon. Gagnon is perhaps best-known for her design work on the artists’ book for Solange’s album, A Seat at the Table. For her part, Daugherty contributes an enigmatic collection of original poetry inspired by the music and visuals, touching on themes of mortality and consciousness. Her poetry can stretch across each vignette, allowing the reader to easily and freely drift between text and image, soundscape, and the moving image—traditional boundaries dissolve. Gagnon’s graphic design compliments Maurice’s photography and is a natural extension of the project, her exploration of the liminal spaces found in nature and how they intersect with the mercurial, ethereal essence of language. Like the project as a whole, and the individual parts that constitute it, the artists’ book is an expression of the dual (seemingly contradictory) quality of nature as something simultaneously intrinsic and beyond language and something that is constructed and clearly patterned. See more here. 

Score

The album is an exploration of texture and tone, analog and digital, and all the spaces in between. Lush, open, instrumental, and electronic, Preservation’s LP is the sonic embodiment of the project as a whole—the details, only heightened by this particular format in this particular place in time, are simultaneously anticipated and unexpected. Taking you from a slow, vast, cosmic introduction into a world of forward momentum and energetic tempos that cut through ambient soundscapes, the unique blend of rhythm and texture leaves one delightfully untethered. In addition to Crane, the record features performances by Colin Killalea (Ex-poets, Albert Hammond Jr.), Eliot Krimsky (Glass Ghost) and Greg Chudzik (Steve Reich). The record is mixed by Grammy award winner (Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs)  Mark Lawson . To listen click, here.