Timeslips (2019) (in collaboration with Joslyn Willauer)
single channel HD video (looping installation or theatrical screening)
39’35

Commissioned by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftgeschichte, Berlin as part of the Deutschlandsjahr Project Mississippi: An Anthropocene River.

Timeslips exists as a poetic frame for considering the state of mind of an interplanetary agronomist—a lens for probing ethical entanglements that include altering the weather to protect vineyards, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, or planetary scale terraforming and biosphere transformation. Mars has a rotational period slightly longer than that of Earth at 24:39:35. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy the technocultural solution to that difference is a programmed pause between 00:00:00 midnight and 00:01:00, called the Timeslip—a time outside of chronometric time, and a suspension of the relentless hegemony of the clock that becomes an opportunity for reflection, introspection, and mindfulness. Inspired by Robinson’s science-based speculations, our fictional protagonist/narrator is an extrapolation of efforts currently underway: German researchers are already exploring techniques to grow vegetables in space at Neumayer-Station III in the Antarctic, and a startup in Los Angeles is building massive AI-powered 3D printers intended one day to manufacture rockets *on* Mars. Our work aims to stimulate discussion beyond the realm of science fiction: people have intervened with our planet for millennia, with varying degrees of unintended consequences. But confronted by the hyperobject of the climate crisis, we find ourselves in the midst of an overdue debate about if, when, and how we must alter the environment…

…and how much is too much?

Click on a link to watch the brief trailer or the extended trailer, or the full length 720p version. Curators interested in the 1080p exhibition version should contact the artists.

Fourteen Slices of Time (2020)
assisted readymade: fourteen custom-printed A6 / 4x6 inch double-sided postcards, wooden stand, metal mailbox, streaming electronic music soundtrack
45 x 25 x 50 cm

Commissioned by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftgeschichte, Berlin as part of the Deutschlandsjahr Project Mississippi: An Anthropocene River. First presentation at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin DE, with Deep Time Chicago in “The Current”, part of the larger program “The Shape of a Practice” [26 October 2020-28 February 2021].

This sculptural work is the counterpart to Timeslips; it takes the form of a set of Postcards from a Remembered Earth. In a way, it reverses the usual function of travel postcards as memory triggers: here, it takes our Martian agronomist’s memories and transforms them into physical souvenirs.