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dieFirma invites you to Swept Away, a series of mystical performances taking place on Shelter Island October 30th–November 1st. With sound and movement, Allison Halter will transform dieFirma East, bewitching the audience under the light of the full moon with new rituals using a collection of her handmade broom sculptures.

Transforming found branches, Halter crafts brooms ranging from the familiar to the truly weird, with multiple heads and looping bristles. Common household objects, when at rest, propped in some kitchen corner perhaps, brooms imply performance; they’re possessed with a readiness to clean and clear. Brooms also perform in a world less mundane: They have a long history in spiritual thought—from familiar images of witchiness to various space-clearing and healing techniques. “There’s magic all around, even in something as mundane as sweeping the floor to change the energetics of your space,” Halter says. “That’s radical because it’s accessible to anyone who wants to pick up a broom.”

At once recognizable and peculiar, Halter’s brooms rely on centuries’ old craft traditions that have often been replaced by the disposable mass-produced plastic tools. These hand-sewn brooms endure and transform with use, overtime acquiring a relationship between tool and user.

Whether fully functional or seemingly defying traditional earthly purposes in mutant form, Halter’s brooms embody these timeless devices’ many uses. With a sound and movement, Halter will cast a unifying spell in each performance. “I’m always looking to create connections between myself and others, to weave a web between disparate people and experiences,” she explains. “Those are the instances when I feel the most magical and successful as an artist.”

Swept Away is an opportunity to clear cobwebs literal or spiritual, to heal, to let us fly, briefly, elsewhere.

Swept Away will take place at dieFirma East, on Shelter Island, N.Y. and will be simultaneously broadcast to the window of dieFirma’s Cooper Square gallery. Free timed reservations are essential to maintain social distancing.


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