Henry Hudsons Forgotten Maps is a production by Harmattan Theater, New York City, June 12 and 14, 2009 at Governor's Island, New York City. We are embarking on this performance event on Friday from 1-3pm on Governor's Island. The performance is an investigation of historical maritime routes with contemporary ecology of the Hudson Bay watershed. Drawing upon the maps of the Dutch East Indian company's colonial empire, the project explores the relationship to sixteenth century globalization and contemporary migrancy. The project uses perceptual and micro ecological maps drawn by Victoria Marshall and Jose DeJesus who work with layered urban topographical mapping. Using this extensive series of site specific maps, a performance exploring the sale of Governor's Island, and the Ghost of Henry Hudson against the backdrop of Castle Clinton's history as a port of New World emigrants unfolds.
To produce this event, the artistic director of Harmattan Theater May Joseph, Designer Victoria Marshall, and Odissi dancer Nandini Sikand worked with the site of Governor's Island over a period of a few visits, scouting out the shoreline in search of a beach on the historic part of the island. Starting off with the built landscape and the originary landmass, we began a series of inquiries into what sort of maps the site recalls: historical maps, cartographic maps of Mercator and Tycho Brach, perceptual maps of knowledge production in the Situationists tradition, and the simultaneous and multiple scaled maps of urban knowing that a body moving through space experiences in flashes of sensation. Having spotted our ideal beach replete with lush sandy banks, we proceeded to create the physical, visual and sound environment that emerges from the site: indigenous, military, colonial, contemporary park, festival destination. Using these interlocking throughlines Joseph built a script layering the sound of the waves and wind with the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Dante Aligheri, Bakhti devotional poetry, Puma Perl's Coney Island poems and Nandini Sikand's choreographic movements. The performance ends with the plaintive complaint of the ghost of Henry Hudson wandering through the waterways of the Hudson Bay trying to get ashore. At the heart of the performance is the citing of the gift of 2 axe heads, a handful of nails and some white beads, the price the Dutch paid the Native Americans for Governor's Island in 1635.
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