Screening and artist talk: The Institute for New Feeling: AVALANCHE

Avalanche is an enhanced water drink designed by the artist collective, the Institute for New Feeling. The newest addition to their wellness product line, this bottled water teases out complexities of our relationship to water consumption and anxieties toward a changing climate. A live outdoor filtration demonstration was held on September 9, 2017 at Denver’s Wastewater Management campus. Avalanche water is enhanced by a human pipeline, drawing a strange, dark visualization of water flow through a city and through the body. The performance presents municipal water usage as a literal concert of bodies, a system that is as captivating as it is improbable, arduous, and flawed. This work takes aim at the enhanced water industry, which is one of the fastest growing beverage industries today by reflecting on the mythologies around the water source and enhancement process.

As part of Index’ exhibition And Tomorrow And, Artist Agnes Bolt from the Institute will be at Index to present the video documentation of the filtration process, and in conversation with curator Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, discuss the work of the Institute and this project in more detail.

Founded by Scott Andrew, Agnes Bolt, and Nina Sarnelle, Institute for New Feeling (IfNf) is an art collective committed to the development of “new ways of feeling, and ways of feeling new.” The Institute’s identity is always shifting. Borrowing aesthetics and language from wellness and tech industries, market research, speculative design, political propaganda, they assume a familiar yet fragile voice of authority. IfNf has recently shown work at Ballroom Marfa, TX, MoMA, NY, Istanbul Modern, Turkey, MAAT, Lisbon, Whitechapel Gallery, London, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Fundacion PROA, Buenos Aires, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Jardin Essential, Bruxelles, Recess, NY, and Southern Exposure, San Francisco. IfNf has been featured in Frieze, Art in America, Vogue Italy, Huffington Post, SFMoMA, Creators Project, and Hyperallergic among others.