Time Capsules
CGI photographs, video, sound, photogrammetric scans; photographic paper, LED screens.
Created and exhibited as part of online residency and digital exhibition, Musk4Mars, hosted in Newart.city Festival 2022, curated by Kawaii.agency.
Exhibited at Credo Bonum Gallery as part of ART START 2022, an initiative of Goethe-Institut Bulgarien & Credo Bonum Gallery, Sofia Bulgaria.
︎︎︎https://newart.city/show/musk4mars
Time Capsules functions as an intended installation of future monuments erected in memory of human history, of our current home and of the present threats of capitalism within a hypothetical base on Mars. The nations who would make it to its headquarters might choose to honour that which has been left behind.
The project inquires into which elements of human culture, history, habits, ideologies would be taken into space. Would exploitation prevail or would we develop more ecological and ethical systems of governance? Which nations would remain on Earth? Would we carry something known and personal to look at with nostalgia or would we mould cultures and histories from scratch?
Rocks and boulders are seen enveloped in steel, marble, and granite awaiting a longterm material transformation by Mars’s high levels of iron oxide and radiation. In the form of vessels - amongst the first sign of human civilisation, they carry the deed of preservation, memory, and constructed knowledge in the age of the Anthropocene. These meta-meteorites which constitute Earth’s oldest rock formations would temporarily archive the global history of humanity and of our previous home. As fossils, they bring the traces of geomorphology and human intervention in landscapes. Establishing a condition of scarcity at a future point in time, the metals pose questions surrounding value, ownership and current systems of production.
The exhibited specimens have been found in photogrammetric libraries and bear the photorealistic shapes and textures of existing rocks and metals. Their provenance acts as a reminder of people’s increasing struggle to differentiate between fact and invention, and of technological advancement allowing for simulacra to irreversibly engulf reality.
On the archive & the archeology of immersion [Transcript]