Subliminal History of New York State
Click on the gemstone to view a calendar of upcoming tour events, including performances, singing, and video workshops.
Follow our progress with live streaming events, blogging, podcasts, photos, and videos.
The Subliminal History of New York State (SHNYS) is going on tour during the summer of 2007. SHNYS is a project of the Society and incorporates local and New York history, research, songwriting, video and community engagement. At the project’s core is a narrative about New York, its land progress, industrialization, utopianism – its “subliminal history.” This summer, New York City-based artist, Carrie Dashow, traveling with shape note singer and composer, Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, will unearth and share this “truer than true” story along the tour route, blending history, local lore, intuition, and geology.
SHNYS will visit upstate towns along New York State’s route of progress (Troy, Schenectady, Rome, Palmyra, Lockport and Lily Dale). Working with historians, geologists, people who work with land, archivists, and local people, Carrie will create new chapters in an unfolding narrative of the story of New York. Gathered information will be written into vignettes and poems, then composed by Jesse into traditional shape note songs taught to community members through a series of singing workshops at different venues in each town where the tour stops.
The research and workshops will culminate when the story is performed as a participatory presentation sung with the town, including the 13th Screen – a video tool of the subliminal used to collectively create a video installation shot by local residents.
More on the singing workshop component of the tour »
Read about the tour’s video workshops »
Tour events will vary from location to location and artifacts left behind will include a blend of storytelling, hand-made books, songs and video.
This project is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency, and with support from the Experimental Television Center, Finishing Funds and an Individual Artist Grant, The New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, The Tank, a space for performing and visual arts in New York City, The New York Foundation for the Arts and the Arts Center of the Capital Region, and a generous donation from the Roland Corporation.
For more about SHNYS, read our press release, or our blog: Route of Progress.