Hello Friends,

I am currently working on my latest project called WILDERNESS, a photographic book and video art project that brings an indigenous perspective into the conversation of ecological sustainability. As a speculative documentary photography and video artist, I have been engaging with ideas around “integral ecology,” a holistic and interdisciplinary research approach to the questions of ecological sustainability and spirituality. Integral ecology asks us to look at not only the industrial practices that need to be reshaped for better sustainability, but how the cultural practices of poetry, cosmology, music and rituals give insight into how all cultures perceive their relationship to nature. As an artist, I have been living, documenting and co-creating with the Misak people in southern Colombia over the last two years, and observing how their spiritual traditions can play a part in the social movement of sustainability.

As an artist, my work focuses on how spiritual traditions play a part in progressive social movements in contemporary society. My previous photography and video projects like <NEW SANCTUARY> takes a look into the plight of the immigrant fight against deportation in New York City with the help of the New Sanctuary Coalition which was a multi-faith/multi congregational movement that provided shelter, legal assistance and other resources to immigrants under constant threat of deportation under the Trump presidency. <Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival> is another photography and video project that was created from the more recent restart of the original Poor People’s Campaign started by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960’s in which the moral compass of America was being asked to be refocused on poverty, worker’s rights, civil rights and a strong critique of America’s role in the Vietnam war. My project focused on the latest iteration of the clergy and activists led groups intervening in the public conversation of poverty, wages,  climates change and civil/human rights.

WILDERNESS comes at a crucial time for us as citizens of contemporary industrial societies. We are experiencing what I perceive as a lack of public discourse around the various green movements, and their heavy reliance on new technologies or renewable resources as the best answers to combat planetary destruction, a result of our own global industrialized economies. As an artist who is constantly questioning, searching and using art to give light to paths that can forge better directions into the future, I am creating this project as an attempt to share how indigenous experiences can have a positive influence on current perspectives of what constitutes an effective “green” movement. Many indigenous peoples seem to hold beliefs, practices, rituals, poetry and music that emphasize a desire for harmony with the planet, or Mother Earth (La Madre Tierra), and a self-identification with their lands. I believe it is necessary to bring forth their ideas and consider them when discussing sustainability. Extractive practices like mining, for example, will need to be ramped up exponentially in order to provide the raw materials like cobalt and lithium to the renewable industries that will need them. Consequently, it will be many indigenous communities that will bear the brunt of the physical labor and use of their lands for extraction, with potentially harmful results.

In 2019, I visited the indigenous Misak people in southern Colombia for the first time, learning that many indigenous communities in the region are resisting violence from both the left and right sides of the political spectrum in order to maintain traditional practices and legal rights to their own lands. I moved to Colombia in 2021 to work on the project full time, and after gaining official permission from the tribal authorities of the Misak people to work with them on their reservation (called Guambia, in the Cauca department of Colombia), I am now in need of crucial funds to complete the project.

I need to raise $20,000 USD by March 1^st, 2024 in order to shoot during the spring, which is an important ceremonial time in the region that I need to capture. Raised funds will be allotted to the following final steps:

• Productions costs for the film crew that will be with me in the spring of 2024 to complete the experimental video/short film WILDERNESS 

• Costs for the publication of the documentary art book of the same name.

My hope is that this project can offer a way to bridge a new awareness between traditional and contemporary cultures in order to start to strategize together the fate of our planet. When we witness a new way of being we recognize the absence in our own ways of perceiving and connecting with the world. The video and book project aim to share a language that we may not already have but that we need to help us discuss how we relate currently to the planet and what could be missing when we are thinking of how to move forward. As a frequent visiting artist and educator, the completion of WILDERNESS will allow me to tour with a project by way of film screenings, exhibitions and providing new tools to educational and arts institutions in order to create necessary yet uncharted space for the various ways of discussing, relating to, and experiencing these urgent themes.

Here’s how you can support the project:

• <Make a Credit/Debit card donation here!>

• Send a check: Please make it payable to Fractured Atlas with WILDERNESS Art Photography Book and Video Project in the memo line. Send it to my studio mailing address: André Daughtry PO Box 720521 Jackson Heights, NY 11372

• If  you would like to generously give a donation of $5,000 or more in the form of a check, please fill out and send along with your check the <Major Gift Letter here> to: André Daughtry PO Box 720521 Jackson Heights, NY 11372

• If you are making a donation through a Donor Advised Fund, the instructions are  slightly different. The check can be sent directly to Fractured Atlas not my studio address since it is not coming from a personal account. Here is the address : Fractured Atlas P.O. Box 55 Hartsdale, NY 10530-0055 Please contact me for the Project Tax ID that your donor advised fund may require. My email address is: andredaughtrystudio@gmail.com You can mail the major gift letter to the same address with the check as well if making a donation of $5000 or more.

• Share this fundraiser: Tell your friends and colleagues about this project and ask them to support!

WILDERNESS Art Photography Book and Video Project is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of  WILDERNESS Art Photography Book and Video Project must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

I am deeply grateful for your support, and for your broader concern of the balance between human societies and our planet, which signifies supporting traditions and practices of a sustainable and spiritual relationship with the planet that supports our very existence.  This project cannot be completed without your generous help!

Sincerely,

André