The Peaks Project
Sarah Cameron Sunde is an American, New York based interdisciplinary environmental artist. Her most notable work to date is 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, a public, video, and performance artwork made in collaboration with water and communities across the world.
art, artist, water, visual
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The Peaks Project

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The Peaks Project

PEAKS is a cumulative video project and performance installation in which Sarah Cameron Sunde and Joshua Dumas re-use the detritus of the built environment to construct brief cinematic moments of iconic vastness. Everyday materials (cork, tin foil, coffee grinds, paper) are sometimes unrecognizable in their transformation into surreal landscape. Peaks investigates our relationship to scale, to awe and beauty, to human ecological impact, and explores cycles of transformation, elevation and corruption.

16 PEAKS was developed as part of Sarah’s LMCC Workspace Residency, 2016-17.  The next 20 “peaks” were developed in early 2018 in anticipation of a Princess Grace Work-in-Progress Residency Award to develop the large-scale video installation punctuated with live performance at Baryshnikov Arts Center in May, 2018.  36 PEAKS had two days of 6 hour performances (3 two-hour cycles each day) in the John Cage and Merce Cunningham Studio on May 23 and 24, 2018.

Feelings of both being a part of something and apart from everything. Helplessness and relief. Calmness and anxiety.    – Jake Manabat

I didn’t leave. I stayed for the whole thing, simultaneously soothed and intrigued by the quiet, cumulative effect of the space and movement. Though I never looked at the time, I know that my pleasure in the experience heightened as it moved into the second hour.      – Mina Samuels for MEDIUM 

We anticipate developing the next 10-12 video “peaks” during 2023 and are looking for the next opportunity to bring the performance element to life.

 

36 PEAKS (the performance installation) was conceived and directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde based on ongoing video work called PEAKS by Sarah Cameron Sunde & Joshua Dumas, music/sound: Joshua Dumas, space/structure design: Anna Kiraly, video installation: Marianna de Nadal, lighting: Jorge Arroyo, assistant director: Kristin Kelly, performance score created in collaboration with and performed by: Burcin Ayebe, Oliver Burns, Lanxing Fu, Deborah Z. Maciel, Sophia Mak, and Irene Siegel.
This residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center is supported by a Princess Grace Foundation-USA Works-in-Progress Grant. The video work was originally created during Sunde’s residency at LMCC Workspace 2016-17. The video work can also be shown autonomously as 16 PEAKS (26 minutes) or as 36 PEAKS (55 minutes), single or multi-channel, looped.