Fallen Fruit: “EMPIRE”
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As part of “Fallen Fruit of New Orleans,” artists Fallen Fruit present a new immersive installation at Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University.
Installation view of Fallen Fruit’s EMPIRE, 2018, at Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, New Orleans. Courtesy the artists.
Celebrating the New Orleans tricentennial, EMPIRE is an art installation by Los Angeles-based artists Fallen Fruit (David Allen Burns and Austin Young). Through the assembly of over 300 objects, the artists will transform Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University into one immersive artwork that explores the history of people and place in terms of cultural legacy, historical narrative, and social constructs.
The project uses objects culled from the diverse archives and collections across Tulane’s campus, including art, sound, documents of record, material culture, and artifacts. It activates objects held by the Hogan Jazz Archive, Latin American Library, Louisiana Research Collection, Middle American Research Institute, Newcomb Art Museum, Newcomb College Institute, Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection / Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Tulane Law Library, and Tulane University Archives, among other campus collections as well as the Amistad Research Center, shifting the lexicon of historical meanings into one work of art.
EMPIRE critically examines the principles of archives and anthropology to interrogate the ways histories are told, remembered, and revised. The immersive artwork considers the historical and contemporary effects that colonialism, slavery, trade, and tourism have had on the movement of culture across and beyond borders to better understand the geographic and cultural position of New Orleans in relationship to Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. EMPIRE invites viewers to creatively interpret the displayed objects, their connections, and their juxtapositions to generate new meanings.
EMPIRE is part of “Fallen Fruit of New Orleans” a suite of site-specific projects taking place throughout New Orleans from June 2017 through June 2018, commissioned and presented by Pelican Bomb, A Studio in the Woods, and Newcomb Art Museum. “Fallen Fruit of New Orleans” was initiated by Pelican Bomb in 2015.
Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, Burns and Young have continued the collaborative work.
