Digging will take place over thirty days.  Beginning with level ground the team will work daily to create earthen mounds.  In the last four days the earth will be re-leveled.  Participants in the performance will wear costumes representing different aspects of American culture like the service industry, business class, farmers, and criminals.  Using hand tools dirt will be accumulated into mounds.  Through more than 580 combined hours of labor Digging empowers each of us to face personal and social challenges.  Although this performance lends itself to many interpretations about the workplace, inequality, and politics, the mounds of digging are ultimately acknowledgements of everyone’s connection to the earth.  The waterfront Station neighborhood is blocks away from the Nations capitol, an enormous monument with global implications.  Digging will become a permanent “nonument” in our memory speaking to another kind of power.

“Are you digging for a community garden?”

“ I remember playing in the dirt.”

“Do you need some man power to get it done?”

“Do you all like my pink shirt?”

“How long is this thing going to be here?”

“Do you need some cold water?”

To some in the SW neighborhood of Washington DC, we are playing in the dirt or prepping the ground for a community garden. We must be doing something that produces purpose and a clear direction. To others we are enduring environmental conditions. To another eye this is a form of public art.

From the first contact with earth at the Nonument site, we were given the opportunity to ask our own important questions as artist, women, and visitors.

As an outsider, what are the implications of unearthing the ground in someone else’s neighborhood?

“Hey man, when the roaches show up, then you know it is time to move out,” was over heard by two young men walking through Nonuments. How do we come to tems with the ephemeral aspect of Digging when we have become conscious of this neighborhood and what has habitually been promised and taken away from it. Is public art imposing on a community when the neighborhood has no choice?

What impact will the Nonuments exhibit have on the community?

We are a temporary addition to the South West Waterfront community but already we’ve learned that digging is a symbol for transition.