Period
Site specific installation
7’x6’x7’
2023Aluminum foil, astroturf, modified baby monitors, bathroom towels, burlap, capiz shells, cardboard, carpet pad, caution tape, CDs, chicken wire, christmas lights, clay, CRT monitor, DV camera, DVD players, electronics, fabric, faucet, fiberglas insulation, foam roller, food packaging, found plants, Giants foam finger, HAZMAT suits, Holga castings, hose cover, LED lights, life vest, memory foam, packing blankets, paint roller, pill bottles, pine needles, plastics, plywood, pool noodles, red urchin shells, soil, speaker wire, squishy croissants, streamers, styrofoam, toothbrush caps, weed whip, yoga mats, zoetropes
Period is a work designed for the aquarium-like windows at the legendary experimental film and video venue Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco. It features layers of material piled up in accumulations that mimic geological strata. Between folds of carpet, styrofoam, and astroturf, jellyfish swim on small video monitors, cameras evolve into their own little hybrid creatures, and live-feed video loops bring the viewer into distorted reflections of themselves. Made almost entirely from found materials, the installation was constructed additively, in four parts, each week building towards a sublimely all-encompassing pile of collective secretion.
The title of the work refers to two meanings--is our present experience the end of something? Or just a passing-on of human intelligence to all the other creatures that are thriving in our wake? Inspired by stories of jellyfish blooms and urchin takeovers, the installation attempts to look at the present from a future in which the moral equation has been flattened--life surviving is life surviving, even if it means humans have self-eliminated.
The work looks dramatically different in day and nighttime, when small lights turn on illuminating pockets of soil and sprouting succulents.
Special thanks to Ariel Zaccheo, ATA Window Gallery Curator, and the folks at ATA.