Mildred’s Lane, résidences d’artistes en Pennsylvanie

Mildred’s Lane is a rustic, 96-acre artists’ residence, living museum, pedagogical summer program, radical experiment in living, and site for creative exchange and learning deep in the woods near Beach Lake, PA.

ABOUT

MILDRED’S LANE is a rustic, 96-acre site deep in the woods of rural northeastern Pennsylvania, in the upper Delaware River Valley, which borders New York state. It is an ongoing collaboration between J. Morgan Puett, Mark Dion, their son Grey Rabbit Puett, and their friends and colleagues. It is a home and an experiment in living. Mildred’s Lane attempts to  coevolve a rigorous pedagogical strategy, where a working-living-researching environment has been developed to foster engagement with every aspect of life.

The entire site has become a living museum, or rather – a new contemporary art complex(ity). It is now important to sidestep the debates around what is art ( or design, architecture and fashion) in order to activate these turbulent multiplicities. It is more a question of praxis and action, is it in an institution? Storefront? A gallery? Deep in the woods? At Home?

The Mildred’s Lane site is a home where the Artist/Practitioner, the Student and the Institution have collapsed roles as they attempt to coevolve with an emergent strategy. In conversations with friends and colleagues – who teach and administer theory and practice in a variety of institutions– the frustrations and limitations of conventional, visual art programs and other pedagogies become apparent. However, there is a new excitement to explore alternatives to the way we research-work-live. Mildred’s Lane welcomes this « new age of curiosity » by activating connections that situate themselves at the nexus of science, methods of living, environmental activism, transhistorical and critical artistic practices. This unusual situation affords participants the ability to collaborate in the production of large-scale, socially charged, research- driven projects within a truly transdisciplinary environment. Woven into the project work is a curriculum based on creatively and experimentally living and working together – what we call workstyles. These valuable collaborations are designed to become shared experiences that hope to have transformative and lifelong effects on how artists think of themselves as practitioners functioning in the world.

PHILOSOPHY

The core of the practice and the educational philosophy at Mildred’s Lane is an attempt to collectively create new modes of being in the world — this idea incorporates questions of our relation to the environment, systems of labor, forms of dwelling, clothing apparatuses, and inventive domesticating;  all of which are form an ethics of comportment — and are embodied in workstyles. As a student at Mildred’s Lane, these issues will be negotiated daily through the rethinking of one’s collective involvements with food, shopping, making, styling, gaming, sleeping, reading, and thinking. Every research session will be an intensive reconsideration of workstyles — there will be visits to alternative farms, discussions around food and cooking, cleaning, and maintenance. The total space of the domestic will be part of the course of study — we will collectively work on experimenting with the full spectrum of our whole system of engagements.

« I dream of a new age of curiosity. We have the technical means for it; the desire is there; the things to be known are infinite; the people who can employ themselves at this task exist. Why do we suffer? From too little: from channels that are too narrow, skimpy, quasi-monopolistic, insufficient. There is no point in adopting a quasi- protectionist attitude, to prevent ‘bad’information from invading and suffocating the ‘good’. Rather, we must simply multiply the paths and the possibilities of comings and goings. » Michel Foucault from, ‘The Masked Philosopher’.

HISTORY

In 1902 Mildred Steffens was born in a tiny farmhouse that was a homestead dating back at least to the 1830’s. She was one of nine siblings, but only she lived and farmed there for her full 86 years. Mid-century she was shacked up with a man named Vincent Miller and the site was then known as ‘the old Miller farm’. The Buildings were left empty after she died, and the site came to be called Mildred’s Lane in memory of her and her remarkable life. Since 1998 when Mark Dion, J. Morgan Puett, and friends discovered the land, it has hosted many experiments, artists, events, projects and other wondrous forms of conviviality.

The original farmhouse where Mildred lived is now the site of a museum becoming, The Mildred’s Lane Historical Society and Museum, that holds the preservation of histories and projects of past, present as well as ongoing occurrences of Mildred’s Lane. In May of 2007, we began the Mildred Archaeology Project that is an ongoing archeological research of the site’s history. The original Homestead now holds the efforts of the Mildred’s Lane Program, history, and archives. The Mildred House, as we refer to it, is the heart of this site, and gateway to the greater conceptual and physical environment of Mildred’s Lane.

Many Artists have contributed works to The Mildred’s Lane Historical Society and Museum this includes a set of hand made canoes by Bob Braine, other works by Jorge Colombo, Brian Conley, Gregory Crewdsen, Mark Dion, Moyra Davey, Sean Foley, Hope Ginsburg, Fritz Haeg, Jeffrey Jenkins, Athena Kokoronis, Julian Laverdiere, Matt Mullican, Nils Norman, Michael Oatman, J. Morgan Puett, Rebecca Purcell, William Purcell, Alexis Rockman, Jason Simon, Allison Smith, Spurse, Jeffrey Valance, Amy Yoes– just to name a few.

The Mildred’s Lane site is continually producing new projects and events. They are currently developing a wildlife preserve and habitat project; building on the discursive public works that Mark Dion has produced on bears; and also rethinking Dion’s original Vivarium works; Josiah McElheny has proposed a Glass Pavilion; J. Morgan Puett is developing new strategies in comportment and workstyles;

More informations : www.mildredslane.com