http://pierderea-iernii.ro

2018, audio, video, ice sculpture, community exchanges and collaborations

Pierderea Iernii / Losing Winter is a community art project in the form as an audio-visual archive of memories and emotions about the season of winter, using human recollection of weather to provide a glimpse of climate change as it intersects with individual lifetimes. The project was realized with the Muzeul National de Arta Contemporana (MNAC) in Bucharest, Romania through exchanges with local citizens, collaborators, and businesses. At the heart of the project are recordings of narrated memories from Bucharest citizens about a winter from their past. Intertwined with these memories are details of personal, political, and historical events, familial and cultural customs - emerging naturally as a consequence of the particular memory shared. The project includes over 100 audio memories and Melt, a video featuring a series of unique ice sculptures inspired by selected memories. The project was presented as a multi-media exhibition at MNAC in September 2018.

2018, virtual reality environment

Ecomimesis is a dynamic, virtual reality (VR) environment containing animated virtual plants that offers viewers the opportunity to have an intimate encounter with plants, collapsing conventional distinctions between inside/outside, natural/cultural, and human/non-human. The species featured is Erigeron canadensis, a common urban ‘weed’ chosen for its prevalence in human crafted landscapes that is at same time often 'invisible' to most people as they choose to ignore such so-called nuisance species. Ecomimesis is inspired by Charles Darwin's The Power of Movement in Plants in which Darwin documents his observations of how plants move as they grow. The title Ecomimesis is borrowed from the writings of philosopher Timothy Morton and signifies an acknowledgment of human entanglement within nature. The project is based on thousands of time-lapse photographs of growing plants and was created with the Imaging Research Center at University of Maryland Baltimore County.

2010 - ongoing, geo-referenced photographs, website (http://uncultivated.info), public displays, community collaborations and events

Uncultivated is a multi-faceted and modular project focused on wild plants within urban landscapes. The project questions the line we draw between cultivated and uncultivated plants and explores how urban landscapes evolve over time due to the effects of human induced change. Each photograph has a corresponding webpage containing detailed information on all the plants appearing in them, the location, and the date it was taken and public displays show images taken in close proximity. Public events are created in collaboration with the local community and the project is customized for each location in which it is realized. The project has so far been realized in different configurations in ten cities.

2008 - 17, unique silver gelatin solar photograms

The images in the Diluvian series were created using expired black and white photographic paper and lengthy solar exposures. These unique cameraless, contact prints feature shadowy images of discarded electronics, which persist in the environment long after their obsolescence, juxtaposed with organic materials, highlighting their vastly different rates of decay.

2016, photographs, text

Baltic Portraits is a trilingual project situated at the intersection between the genres of portraiture and landscape that explores the internal dimension of the natural environment in human identity. The project consists of a series of fifty portraits of residents of Liepaja, Latvia, standing at the edge of the Baltic Sea displayed with a quote about the role the sea plays in their lives, along with eight long-exposure photographs of the sea taken just after sunset. Latvia is one of the three Baltic countries, with a complex history of occupation by Nazi Germany and the USSR for a majority of the 20th century. The Baltic Sea forms Latvia's border on its western side while Russia borders its eastern side. With tensions with Russia recently re-emerging, the Baltic Sea is a visible reminder of the vulnerability of this small country.

2014, photographs, text, audio, community collaboration

Portrait Garden is a metaphorical garden of 'portraits' of eleven women incarcerated at Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, a multilevel security prison. Portrait Garden used environmental stewardship as a tool for self-reflection and resulted in the creation of three perennial gardens on the prison grounds. The display of the project consists of a collection of photographic prints of the cultivated plants paired with text and audio statements from each woman.

Junkspace
2012/2018, time and location sensitive animation, custom software

Junkspace is a time and location sensitive animation that dynamically visualizes space debris tracking data, using images of earth-bound electronic waste as stand-ins for debris in orbit above the viewer. Using custom software, orbital debris tracking data, and the IP address of the user’s location, the movement of animated e-waste on screen aligns with the path of pieces of debris in orbit above the user’s location. The project draws attention to a central problem of technological innovation: objects that persist in the environment long after their functional and stylistic obsolescence. The project's title is borrowed and re-interpreted from Rem Koolhaas' essay of the same name. The project originally also existed as an iOS app. The project is currently being updated in collaboration with Joe Reinsel.

2001 - 09, pigment ink jet prints and Fuji Crystal Archive prints

Discard is a body of work consisting of several discrete series of photographic prints featuring movie films discarded by public institutions (libraries, schools, archives). Harking back to the 19th century practice of postmortem photography, each print serves as a memento mori to an obsolete film. More generally, the series reflects on the often arbitrary process that determines which obsolete cultural artifacts are digitized and preserved.

2003, installation of 140 Lightjet prints, projected video, viewer-activated audio (computer, Isadora software, laser triggers), ink jet prints

Story of M presents the viewer with fragmented details (images, sounds, films) of an anonymous man’s life across several decades of time. These various elements set the stage for multiple narratives to be constructed – the shape of any one story reflecting back to the viewer their own subjective “M”. The viewer's movement in the second room of the installation randomly triggers one of 200 audio clips to play, incorporating them into the shaping of the work.

1997 - 2001, chromogenic photographs and photograms

Plaids combines super-eight movie film and a labor-intensive, hand-made process. Each print in the series was made from dozens of individually developed and toned strips of super-eight movie film woven together, each containing a mini-narrative embedded within the film frames. These sequences feature short performances by the artist as well as frames from found footage. These images are 'photographs' of film which at first glance are abstract, referencing pixels, paintings, and textiles.