Below the Line was a two week field-based research trip/performance work following the ancient shorelines of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville throughout the Bonneville basin (most of present day Utah) in May 2010.

Lake Bonneville once spanned more than 20,000 square miles and had a depth of over 1000 feet.

For two weeks we gathered materials to document and creatively respond to the ancient shores of Lake Bonneville, using photography, drawing, super 8 film, and GPS mapping/logging.

We were particularly interested in sites where the human and the geologic intersected–where humans today meet Lake Bonneville of the Pleistocene. And at such sites, how humans have built and designed, perhaps unknowingly, a world upon and across the floor of ancient Lake Bonneville.

We imagined what this vast body of water, a lake that was designated “extinct” around 14,000 years ago, continues to make possible for human life in 2010.

Our project, as artists, is to reanimate Lake Bonneville. We sense that the Lake is a force that continues to shape the contemporary environments built upon it. We want to enliven the dry spaces where land and water interacted continuously for thousands of years.

Additional documentation and project updates will be posted throughout 2010-11.