Dimensions Variable, 10-minute loop
Student scrap steel, locally gathered weeds, Pepto Bismol, balls of earthenware clay rolled around on the grounds nearby, transducers, pumps, solenoid, camcorders, projectors, electronics, plant lights, fish tank
Presented at the Visual Arts Center in Acceleration Without Arrival
University of Texas, Austin
Photographic Documentation by Alex Boeschenstein
Video Documentation by Britt Moseley and Virginia Montgomery
2024-2025
In the gallery space, projector light dances upon two perpendicular walls. Debris floats and sinks within the image, magnified by the hazy pink hue of its ambiguous surroundings. In the center of the gallery is a small fish tank flanked by mounted cameras, twisted cables, and a hanging UV lamp that provides a simple spotlight into the murky water below. Globs of Pepto Bismol are slowly dispensed into the fish tank, creating a playful dance with the rusted metal structure submerged below; it comes to life through an automated intervention that is akin to a “hands-free” puppeteering. Amorphous asteroid-like sculptures (Memory Meteoroids) filled with pansies and sow thistle weeds dangle from the ceiling, leaving the gallery in a state between stasis and dynamism.
Each Memory Meteoroid has pieces of metal jutting out from the form. Printed on these shards are downloaded patterns from bus seats and hotel carpets. To me, these carpet patterns resemble microscopic imagery, making the object a diagram, showing details of the surface. The objects are finally wired to the central tank/planet with audio transducers and cables, to sing each other “Lessons” in human culture over the ambient score. Unfortunately, they only know fragments, like greeting card songs and computer bootup chimes on Windows 95. It is a comically tragic situation they find themselves in, stranded in this ominous, desert landscape.