Marfa Live Arts Presents Domina de Bardo by Saint Profanus
A one-night-only, audience-immersive installation housed within Marfa’s oldest central architectural feature, the Presidio County Courthouse, on September 21, 2019.
Domina de Bardo is a site-specific work born from questions concerning the absence of the Presidio County Courthouse Goddess of Justice statue’s symbolic attributes; namely her sword, scales and blindfold.
“Domina de Bardo”, latin for “the lady of the Bardo”, locates it’s genesis within archival and community-based research and culminates in a live installation situated within the Historic Presidio County Courthouse, built in 1886.
The live theater performance will include oral histories, sound/music, costumes, video, and installations at the Courthouse. Rooms in the Courthouse and the coupla will be transformed by two immersive site-specific installations allowing both first-time and regular visitors to the Courthouse to see this public space in a new way.
Through transposing perspectives, Saint Profanus, with the support of Marfa Live Arts, endeavors to open an expansive dialogue questioning the supposed impartiality of justice and presumed accuracy of memory. Reconstructing lost meaning by re-interpreting traditionally held notions of “historical relevance”, the multi-media work offers a participatory exploration through and of the absurdity inherent in presenting an architecture for applications of justice.
Founded and directed by kb Thomason & Ria Leigh, Saint Profanus is a post-disciplinary incubator for investigating human relationships to materiality and subjective experience. Intervening at various interstices of the concept-art-object axis, Saint Profanus is a mobile and unrestrained genesis point for new modes of (re)working familiar and digestible formats in order to prompt reflection on consensus reality.
Saint Profanus Experience: Domina de Bardo will take place on Saturday September 21, 2019 from 5 pm – 9 pm at the Presidio County Courthouse in Marfa, TX. The event is free and open to the public.
For more information, visit www.marfalivearts.org/domina-de-bardo.
