Converge45 | The Evidence of Foot Fall | Linda K. Johnson

Linda K. Johnson is a dance-based conceptual artist living and working in Portland. A cornerstone of the Pacific Northwest performance ecology for over four decades, she is known for large-scale, site-based movement works and choreographies that address our collective relationship to place. Her works have engaged Portland’s public parks, waterways, abandoned lots, neighborhoods, theaters, and other shared spaces.

The Evidence of Foot Fall is a retrospective and program series at PLACE, a landscape architecture studio in Northwest Portland that shares Johnson’s emphasis on placemaking and the cultivation of meaningful public space. The presentation expands from Mycelium Dreams Project, Johnson’s ongoing, durational cartography and archival project documenting the history and evolution of Portland’s dance community. On view at PLACE are selections from the Mycelium Dreams Project relational maps, along with other forms of embodied archiving: recorded interviews, action drawings, posters, costumes, performance ephemera, and a new solo performance that incorporates material contributions from collaborators and audience members.

Crossing decades, artistic milieus, and cultural contexts, The Evidence of Foot Fall traces the rhizomatic relationships that comprise Portland’s creative ecology. Johnson’s work understands dance as a living record, carried through bodies, sites, documents, and social bonds long after a performance ends. Extending this approach, a series of workshops invites participants into the work of collective remembrance, insisting that artistic histories are sustained not only by institutions, but by the communities that continue to gather and move together.

The artist wishes to offer her deep gratitude to Stephen Hayes, Jessica Jackson-Hutchins, Stephen Slappe, Seth Nehil, Nicole Stewart Graves, Jeff Smith, Ella Marra-Ketelaar, PLACE, Lumi Tan, Converge45, and the 60+ Portland dance artists who contributed so generously and supportively to this exhibition and the ever-unfolding Mycelium Dreams Project. Visit the Mycelium Dreams Project website launched in conjunction with this exhibition at Myceliumdreamsproject.net