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Fishing Moor

John Sturgeon & Insa Winkler -1992

Collaborative Performance - documentation

1a. Fishing Moor b&w1.jpg

b&w PHOTO CREDIT: Photo credit: Jim Zielinski

Fishing Moor was one of several works Sturgeon executed as part of Symposium Moor 1992, an international festival of performance & site-specific work on the Wittemoor.  The Wittemoor, Germany is part of a larger complex of moors (bogs) that stretch across northern Germany and The Netherlands.  This month long festival gathered European and American artists, to live on, investigate and then respond to environmental issues evoked by the delicate ecology and unusual geographical-archaeological sites on the Wittemoor.

            FISHING MOOR was a video and performance collaboration with German sculptor and performance artist, Insa Winkler.  Two long metal fishing poles were designed each with a sling attached at the upper end, from which a video camera hung, lens down.  In performance Sturgeon and Winkler trekked throughout the moor, extending the pole/cameras out over sections of the moor from high overhead or swooping low, fishing into areas impossible to reach or where environmentally protected.  Fishing Moor resulted in a series of rather painterly, landscape trackings or aerial video photos that were stilled or digitally processed in post-production forming portraits of the various ecologies of the moor.  They also documented the other artists' site-specific pieces as well as the bohlenwegs.  The costumes were a combination of fishing gear and a modern interpretation of the symbolic male/female totem figures that once guarded the difficult and dangerous crossing (bridge) of the ford in the heart of the moor.

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© 2026 John Sturgeon

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