CLOUDship, a performance art project conceived and directed by Associate Art Professor Kate Walker, included a collection of alumni, undergraduate and graduate students guiding a large-scale inflatable through the Boise foothills.
The inflatable was modeled after the EBR1, a nuclear powered airplane engine that was tested at the Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear research site, in the 1950s but never made it off the ground. The art project used props and costume, performance, film and the environment to capture past and present perceptions of dystopia manufactured by the media. Environmental threats such as global warming, extreme climate events, and the existential threat of nuclear catastrophe are just some of the contributors to so-called disaster culture. CLOUDship reflects the drive to search for something better, and the emotional resistance to overcome disaster in pursuit of a manifest utopia.