Desert Turtle is a video performance piece by Mitsu Salmon around ideas of shelter, landscapes, and migration. The performance draws from family history, voice and geology. Mitsu’s mother arrived from the wet and dense city of Fukuoka Japan to the vast and dry Mojave desert. She related to the turtle she found in the landscape, hiding in their shells and traveling with their home on their back. In Japan, a turtle was a symbol for longevity and in the expanse of the Mojave desert, she felt a sense of infiniteness. But across the mountains, there was the testing of the atomic bomb. As if such a thing still needed testing, she thought. The video interweaves music, dance, and non-linear storytelling. This work was made in residency at Roger Art Loft and through the Roger Foundations.
