Illuminate the Lock is a program that uses the 49 foot tall chamber of Upper Saint Anthony Falls Lock & Dam as a platform for artistic intervention. It is a partnership between Northern Lights.mn, Mississippi Park Connection, and the National Park Service with support from the Saint Anthony Falls Heritage Board and the US Army Corps of Engineers.
We are pleased to announce that a project has been selected for Illuminate the Lock 2018. Returning the River is an experimental, participatory performance about the Mississippi River that explores collective dreams of freedom by Mike Hoyt, Dameun Strange, and Molly Van Avery with Ritika Ganguly. It will be presented on September 20-22 at the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam. For more details on timing and location, visit the project page.
In the summer of 2015 the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam in downtown Minneapolis ceased operations as the head of navigation on the Mississippi River. While boats no longer pass through the lock, this massive piece of river infrastructure is open to the public as a visitor center operated by the National Park Service.
We’ve long been fascinated by the architecture of the Lock, so were eager to join forces with the NPS and Mississippi Park Connection to support artistic experimentation inside its walls.
Illuminate the Lock is a two-weekend series of artist projections inside the Lock chamber.
Aaron Dysart’s Surface takes years of handwritten data recorded by Army Corp of Engineers staff as the basis for a light show. Daily pool heights will translate into shifting colors projected on atmospheric effects created in the lock chamber. The spectacle will display the 52 year operating history of this iconic Minneapolis space through near daily observations by the people who tended it. September 15-16.
Andrea Carlson’s The Uncompromising Hand engages Spirit Island, a limestone island and Dakota sacred site that was once in the Mississippi River near the current Lock and Dam. A hand–drawn animation based on six photographs of the island at the MN Historical Society’s collection that plot the island’s lengthy dismantling between the 1890s and 1960s will fill one side of the lock’s long wall. Text in Dakota and Ojibwe will accompany the projection. September 29 – 30.
Illuminate the Lock is presented by Northern Lights.mn, Mississippi Park Connection, the National Park Service with support from St. Anthony Falls Heritage Board and the US Army Corp of Engineers. Dysart’s presentation is also part of Here and There presented by The Soap Factory.