La Sierra by Sarah McCormick and Kevin Sweet

Through oral histories, community-based media workshops, and extended reality technology, this multimodal project is a collaboration with the people of Costilla County, Colorado, a community of predominantly Chicanx families who have fought for their rights to an 83,000-acre mountain tract known as ‘La Sierra’ for nearly 200 years. Using emergent media to create a simulated experience of three significant sites on this land, La Sierra explores the ways technology can serve as a critical mediator in a community’s navigation and understanding of antagonistic histories dealing with land, power, and use.

Artist Bio

Sarah McCormick's work focuses on other-than-human agency and the use of conservation rhetoric that veils colonial agendas in land management. In grappling with the problematic language, agenda, and social mindset of conservation, she attempts to foster healthy perspectives and relationships with land. Her practice employs audio, found objects, electronic transmissions, digital fabrication, and other elements that culminate in sculptural installations both in and out of the gallery, and these installations are driven by her own personal experiences with land, as well as by communities with whom she engages.

Kevin Sweet is a visual artist whose practice revolves around questions of memory, performance, and play. Kevin is currently a Principal Investigator with Sound Planetarium, a VR astrophysics and art collaboration rethinking how we can understand our universe through kinesthetic and participatory experience (exhibited at the USA Science & Engineering Festival, Washington, DC). Prior to relocating to Colorado, he was Technical Director & Animator for the intermedia performance Twinsome Minds (premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin) and collaborator on JoyceStick, a VR adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses (exhibited at the James Joyce Centre, Dublin, and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore).