Rebecca Weisman

In the fall of 2012 I traveled with a friend to an abandoned iron mine in upstate New York, bushwhacking for hours through woods with no map or compass, passing under a fence and hiking a mountain of iron slag to get to the top of the mine. We climbed down through the conveyor belt into the mine shaft. At it’s very bottom, the inside of the mine was pitch black and wet, the light from our flashlights bouncing off crystalline chemical surfaces, and fine iron particles that sparkled like diamonds.

Excavations is a site-specific installation that took place over three days at the Design Center at Goddard College in Plainfield ,Vermont that uses the imagery and materials from this journey to activate another space. The historic Design Center building was built in the 1970’s by pioneering architect David Sellars and his students; now in disrepair, the building runs the risk of abandonment. A video projection of iron sand taken from the abandoned mine traverses the windows of all three stories of the building, filling and then emptying the space. The architectural and temporal aspects of the projection asks viewers to consider how we might mine the site for future inspiration and find value in what is hidden, unrefined, and overlooked. Audience generated footage is projected via live feed from a Go Pro camera embedded in a miner’s hat that participants can wear as they explore condemned parts of the building.

Multi-media installation, video projection, sound, 2013