2009

The Ground Falls Away: expansion is a video and sound installation that looks at the terrestrial movement of conservation and economic expansion displayed in the landscape of Panama’s Canal Zone. Recorded on location, in one of the world’s largest construction sites, artists Andrew Freeman and Jay Needham explore the physical and cultural conditions of the canal-zone as the metaphoric hourglass of the Americas. In this initial offering from their ongoing work in the region, the “expansion” project presents a fluid focal point for the artists; the installation points to a commercial and ecological zone where multinational pressures conspire to unearth the inevitable collision between global conditions and the environment. Produced in a partnership with the Panamanian NGO, Associatión Panamericana para la Concervación, the work examines a newly widened canal that harbors a myriad of consequences in the wake of its prior existence as part of a transnational US military landscape.

2 channel video installation
A collaboration between Andrew Freeman and Jay Needham