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Desert Rose, 2016 | Live audiovisual performance | Commissioned by Lampo. Performed at The Graham Foundation, Chicago. | Edited version

“Desert Rose is a live audiovisual performance that arranges found imagery and field recordings into a rhythmic composition of otherworldly forms. Ludy has worked with browsed images since 2000, generating works such as Low Prim and Postcards. More recently, she has collected pictures of natural disasters, tragedy and death, or what she calls “everyday horror.” In this special project for Lampo, she alters these images until they become unrecognizable, shaping them into undulating 3D bodies and landscapes. Ludy also adds layered sound—air-conditioner hum and the buzz of traffic, trees, birds and insects recorded from her workspace while browsing online. By combining materials from these dissimilar environments, and then filtering them through her intuitions, Ludy’s performance becomes an opportunity for the artist to expel the effects of image saturation through a meditative process. “It is not my intention to simply transform horror into beauty,” she writes. “It is a method I work with to find balance and peace in the world today.” - Andrew Fenchel