The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum is happy to welcome back visual artist Cyriaco Lopes and poet Terri Witek to Flagler College for a participatory virtual event on Thursday, April 8 at 5:30pm. This event is a collaboration with the St. Johns County Public Library, in conjunction with National Poetry Month. The event is free and open to the public, and registration is required.

Zoom has become a ubiquitous part of both our personal and professional lives during the course of the pandemic. Through The Keepers, Lopes and Witek will utilize Zoom as an investigation of the gap between images and text, as orchestra, as conversation, as interactive performative work. The artists encourage viewers to participate in the creation of both visual and auditory elements in order to generate a unique art experience on this newly popular platform.

We would appreciate the audience’s participation during this event, and therefore we will request all participants to turn on their cameras (aka share video) and unmute themselves during certain segments of the performance. While full participation is strongly encouraged, we understand that not everyone might feel comfortable showing their faces and lending us their voices, and there will be ample opportunity to participate in the event through the chat function.

The Keepers will be the second time the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum has collaborated with Lopes and Witek, and the fifth time working with Witek and her other collaborators. In 2015 we presented Lopes and Witek’s exhibition Currents/Correntes. In 2016 we hosted visual artist Matt Roberts and Witek for their interactive, multiple site-specific digital project Dream Garden. In 2017, we invited Roberts and Witek back to Flagler College who, alongside Denke Chen, performed Implements for Removing Foreign Bodies.