Director: Jacklyn Brickman, Kelsey Paschich, Kevin Abbott

Film: Frozen Fields: Unexpected Growth

Bio: Frozen Fields: Unexpected Growth is a multimedia live performance and report from the Cryo Speculation Laboratory at The Department of Planetary Futures. FF:UG meditates on time, space, and the preservation of life through live physical and digital visuals that approach the overarching topic of absurdity in eco-art through sound, experimental animation, bodily movement and realtime performance. Agents traverse the laboratory amongst layers of time, former, and future selves to process and preserve grass via methods of dissection, archivation, and cryopreservation. Projected ghostly figures echo the motions of live dancers to present alternate existences through layered dimensions. A rumination on fragility, metamorphosis, and human kind in the face of a shifting world, the layered choreography, visuals, and sound design explore liquified, frozen, and compressed possibilities for the future – livable or not. FF:UG ponders humanity’s place in time and space, bodies in motion, and the evolving dimensions of future selves, in a cryptic celebration of the unexpected resilience of living things.

A collaborative group consisting of Jacklyn Brickman, Kelsey Paschich, and Kevin Abbott, act as agents of The Department of Planetary Futures Cryo Speculation Laboratory to present Frozen Fields: Unexpected Growth.

Jacklyn Brickman is a visual artist and educator whose work entangles science fact with fiction to address social and environmental concerns by employing natural entities, processes, and technology. Her work spans installation, video, and performance, with a special interest in cross-disciplinary collaboration and social engagement. Fellowships include The National Academy of Sciences, Chaire arts et sciences, Jentel Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Erb Family Foundation. She has exhibited her work internationally. Brickman resides in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the ancestral and contemporary territory of the Council of the Three Fires – the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi. Indigenous nations of the Great Lakes region are also known as the Anishinaabe. She is an Assistant Professor of Kinetic Imaging at Western Michigan University.

Kelsey Paschich is a multi-faceted dance artist originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico and currently based in Kalamazoo, MI. She is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Western Michigan University. Her international dance performance career spans 20 years and multiple genres. Her research explores the intersection of dance and technology, and she creates work that explores humanness, the moving body, and digital physicality. Paschich’s multimedia work includes live dance, screendance, dance for film, and choreographic installations. Most recently her work with motion capture technology has been in collaboration with interactive media specialist, Kevin Abbott. Their digital work has been screened in Istanbul, Lisbon, Ulm, Denver, Michigan, and across the United States. Paschich is the recipient of the WMU Presidential Innovation Professorship 2023. She was also selected as a Distant Digital Dance Maker for Tanz mit dem Tiger 2021 + 2022 (Ulm, Germany), Creative Living for Dancers Award 2021 (Brussels, Belgium), the Dancing Lab Residency at the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron (NCCAkron) 2021. Paschich’s interdisciplinary choreographic and performative experience continues to inform her pedagogical methodology in providing an innovative and holistic education that cultivates the next generation of artists.

Kevin Abbott, Director of the Virtual Imaging Technology Lab at Western Michigan University, has been combining media technology with the arts for over 25 years. An accomplished artist, designer and programmer, Kevin’s early work focused primarily on the integration of digital media with live performance, collaborating on over 30 theatre, dance and music performances. More recently, he has focused on the use of real time rendering and motion capture technologies. In 2019, in partnership with Kelsey Paschich, Kevin created Recode, a multi-award winning screen dance that merges video, motion capture and real time rendering. Current interests include immersive projections, LED wall technology and the exploration of audience interaction with digital content.