'Sneak Peek' Film Preview:

Midway (Chris Jordan, in progress)

As a prelude to the conference, "Across the Threshold: Creativity, Being, & Healing" (Feb 28 - March 3) - focused this year on Personal/Social/Environmental Transformation - acclaimed photographic artist, cultural/environmental activist, and filmmaker Chris Jordan will give a presentation (with clips) about his in-progress documentary. 

-- Q&A to follow with Chris Jordan!

Using spare narration and stunning imagery, Chris Jordan's feature film Midway explores the plight of Laysan albatross plagued by the ingestion of our plastic trash. Both elegy and warning, the film explores the interconnectedness of species, with the albatross on Midway as a mirror of our humanity.

About the Filmmaker:

Acclaimed photographic artist and cultural/environmental activist Chris Jordan will be the keynote speaker for the 2013 Across the Threshold conference. His keynote speech is entitled "Encountering Midway: the roles of grief, hope, and love in healing our world".

Jordan is internationally-known for his work that “explores contemporary mass culture from a variety of photographic and conceptual perspectives, connecting the viewer viscerally to the enormity and power of humanity’s collective will. Edge-walking the lines between art and activism, beauty and horror, abstraction and representation, the near and the far, the visible and the invisible, his work asks us to consider our own multi-layered roles in becoming more conscious stewards of our complex and embattled world” (www.chrisjordan.com).

Jordan’s works, which include solo and group exhibits, several books, and an upcoming documentary film, are exhibited and published worldwide.

"To live ethical lives, we are called to turn toward the staggering enormity of human-caused catastrophes like the Pacific Garbage Patch and the Gulf Oil Disaster, opening our heart to their horrors, and taking the risk that we might be overwhelmed by the potent feelings this process brings up in us. I can see no other acceptable approach, yet I fear that by dwelling on the awfulness of these tragedies—and the smorgasbord of others we survey in the news every day—we may lose our already tenuous connection with life’s beauty, mystery, humor, and joy. I want to learn to stand in the paradox of these conflicting realities, turning more fully toward each of them despite the anxiety involved, as they generate their respective teachings about what it means to live as an engaged citizen in our times." -- Chris Jordan

Cost: Free and Open to the Public!

Sponsors: Sponsored by the Duke Dance Program, the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, and the Center for Documentary Studies. Also made possible by a Visiting Artist Grant from the Council for the Arts, Office of the Provost, Duke University; and generous support from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.