a wonky slo/mo walk-through of the fourth nightswimming installation on saturday november 12th, 2022 at matchbook distilling co. in greenport.

si tu supieras compañero + rosalia

 
 
 

nightswimming is a meditation on connection and transience through the vulnerability of the subject. In the night, with the sea, through time; the images are intimate glimpses through glitch and grain of fleeting intimacy and the unspoken awareness of the human experience.

 
 

installation shots:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

nightswimming began as a personal reckoning—a revisitation of a specific memory during what I call my own year of magical thinking. At its heart, it was an attempt to hold on to a fleeting moment of intuition, clarity, and emotional suspension: jumping into dark waters at 4 a.m., unsure of everything except the need to leap. What began as a photographic meditation on transformation, rewilding, and trust evolved into a multisensory installation that seeks to recreate that same threshold of space for others.

Traditional gallery walls felt too static, too clinical for the vulnerability and movement inherent in the work. Instead, I wanted the viewer to feel submerged in the moment—to be inside the image. The illuminated lightboxes offered a way for the photographs to exist as self-contained objects with their own energy, glowing and shifting like auras in conversation with sound, video, and space. By integrating audio recordings, ambient seascapes, and simultaneous video sequences, nightswimming extends beyond stillness into a living system of echoes and sensations. It’s a work about impermanence and love—solitary and communal, meditative and disruptive—a quiet call toward catharsis, however fleeting. Each iteration reflects not a perfect picture, but a state of becoming, revealing that the real work, for me, lies in embracing the fluid relationships between image, body, space, and emotion.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Stephen Klipp

These lightboxes were designed and built by Stephen Klipp, an artist, music producer, and skilled carpenter based in Greenport, NY.

*INSTAGRAM*

 
 
 
 
 
 

displayed works

available for purchase + price upon request

  1. narrow river road, nightswimming, 2019
    [In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

5. fourth street beach, nightswimming, 2019
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

9. stirling basin, nightswimming, 2019
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

10. in the sound, nightswimming, 2019
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

17. off eagle point, nightswimming, 2022
[Polycarbonate Print • Lightbox Built Upon Commission]

13. looking out, nightswimming, 2019
[Polycarbonate Print on Plexi • Lightbox Built Upon Commission]

2. off inlet pond, nightswimming, 2019
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

4. down youngs rd, nightswimming, 2019
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

6. the bay down south harbor road, nightswimming, 2019?
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

12. bay avenue dock, nightswimming, 2019
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

11. rocky point road, nightswimming, 2019
[Polycarbonate Print on Plexi • Lightbox Built Upon Commission]

14. the wrackline, nightswimming, 2019
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

3. off gull pond, nightswimming, 2020
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

7. harbor road, nightswimming, 2019
[Polycarbonate Print on Plexi • Lightbox Built on Commission]

8. el muelle de san blas, nightswimming, 2019
[In Lightbox •Mahogany Frame, Silicon, Polycarbonate Print on Plexi]

15. in the reeds, nightswimming, 2022
[Polycarbonate Print • Lightbox Built Upon Commission]

16. in the marsh, nightswimming, 2022
[Polycarbonate Print • Lightbox Built Upon Commission]

15. widow’s hole, nightswimming, 2023
[Available Upon Commission]

 
 
 

Words from “Herencía y Hogar: Latin American Artists of the East End,” group show at the Floyd Memorial Library.

 

"Why would I show you images of my family's stomping grounds or my hella' brown skin when I can show you a real interiority that stems from my own rootlessness and diaspora? That is my inheritance from a heritage rooted in imperialism. If it were the other way around, you would see the same thing - rootlessness - because those images would have come from the same place from which I've confronted the world. How else do you consider connection and transience without considering disconnection or rootlessness? 

'Where' the water is doesn't matter - the water is my heart. The North Fork is my reimagining. This work was made by me, who is LatinAm, Latina, Latinx & etc; and you are reading this inside of a building built on bricks brought over from England and built by the son of one of the founding fathers of the United States, the ultimate imperial experiment. You are looking. And that, by itself, is radical."

"Para que les muestro imágenes del barrio de mi familia o mi piel morena cuando les puedo mostrar una interioridad que nace de mi propio desentierro y diáspora? Esa es mi herencia de un patrimonio con raíces en el imperialismo. Si fuera al contrario, vería lo mismo - desplazamiento - porque esas imágenes hubieran nacido del mismo lugar y posición de donde yo me enfrento al mundo. Como pudiese considerar conexión y la impermanencia sin también considerar la desconexión y desenlace de vínculos?

'El donde' del mar no importa. El mar es mi corazón. Y esta isla del North Fork es de mi reinvención. Este labor fue creada por mi quien es Latina Americana, Latina, Latinx y etc; y usted esta leyendo esto dentro de un edificio construido con ladrillos traídos de Inglaterra por el hijo de uno de los fundadores de los Estados Unidos, el ejemplo definitivo del experimento imperialista. Usted está acá, mirando. Eso, por si solo, es radical.”

 
 

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