SanctuWHEREium | Peter Pendergrass
SanctuWHEREium by Peter Pendergrass brings together objects from the Elsewhere collection, which are either religious or that can be considered spiritual. These objects are arranged in small shrines and a community altar, where museum visitors are invited to contribute objects from the museum that they have a spiritual connection with. The installation offers a setting for Elsewhere artists and visitors to meditate, pray, and contemplate their relationship with the divine. It marks the Co-Lab as a place for community gathering and connection. Shrine spaces on either side of the projector screen, are filled with animal representations that relate to animal spirits and icons from diverse religious traditions.
To consecrate the SanctuaWHEREium Pendergrass staged a series of meditational exercises in the space. In keeping with his interest in exploring non-institutional approaches to the spiritual, these exercises focused on the way that contemporary technology – mobile phones, laptops, the Internet- can be used to expand traditional notions of sacred space and spiritual practice. The performance featured a guest appearance by roaming, LA-based artist Guru Rugu, and was attended virtually by people living outside of the Greensboro area. The projector screen at the center of the SanctuWHEREium played an important role in the performance, as Pendergrass, Guru Rugu, and the virtual participants were projected into the space on a Google Hangout. As well as testing the boundaries of spiritual practice in a contemporary, highly technological society, the performance called into question the customs of live performance by forgoing the physical presence of performers and by inviting the audience to use the mobile devices, rather than silence them.
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