To Name the Masters of Broken Earths
photographs backmounted on plexiglass,
Video, 2 min 52 second
2021-2
A piece of discarded plexiglass becomes lens and subject, exploring notions of transparency and invisibility vis-a-vis structures of material production, waste, and extraction. Shots from Cape May, New Jersey, adjacent to the silica mining region, are juxtaposed with scenes from a construction and demolition waste management site in Philadelphia– spaces of perceived beauty paired with bucolic third-nature landscapes, gesturing at the invisibility of toxicity and nodding to the shadows that trail the supposed transparency of legal regulation and environmental remediation.
Video script consists of language collaged and reconfigured by the artist, from notes taken from discussion with artists Tomashi Jackson, Sondra Perry, Martha Schnee, and special guests in their course "Time Out of Mind", which took place at Harvard University’s Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies in Spring of 2021 which focused on the writings of Octavia Butler. There is one unaltered quote from poet Sophia Mautz: "It feels late in the history of the world". The project’s title, "To name the masters of broken earths...", is a direct quote from Kathryn Yussoff’s A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None.