DISSONANCE a climate change performance-based art intervention at sea

To coincide with the conclusion of the United Nations COP23 Climate Change Conference, photography and film is unveiled from DISSONANCE. In this artwork, American visual artist Heather Theresa Clark confines dancers to a platform that appears suspended from a marine crane. Dwarfed by the crane and the scale of the barge at sea, identically clad dancers become small and anonymous. DISSONANCE embodies the psychological barriers of addressing climate change and the emotions that many of us experience, because of the overwhelming scale of the crisis - troubled that our fossil fuel-based economy could be permanent, yet yearning for solutions. Photography and film, produced in collaboration with Gretjen Helene, is a new body of work from this performance-based art intervention. While the dancers are trapped within the confines of their situation, Clark hopes that we are not. “DISSONANCE is meant to signal some answers to climate change – physicality, art, science, exploration, and the beauty of humanity and nature, which is worth preserving.” DISSONANCE was produced off the coast of Woods Hole, Cape Cod USA while Clark was the artist-in-residence at Woods Hole Research Center, which is ranked the world's leading climate change think tank.