Possibility Chambers (2018)
Robert C Beck and Sarah Max Beck
PVC, post-consumer plastic, steel, electronics, wood, glass, horse tail rush, fiber optic grass, taro, canna, tiger nut, spider plant, various wetland volunteer plants, lemon balm, cilantro, aloe, katuk, monstera deliciosa, earth, water, rock dust, micro organisms, mycorrhizae, three southeastern leopard frog tadpoles, human urine
5 x 8 x 6 ft
This scaled down version of a wetland ecosystem asks the question where is “nature” now? Where does it live now, in the anthropocene? Our hypothesis is that the romantic, and fictional, premise of the unspoiled-by-man-terafirma as the true “capital-N” nature is as detrimental to Earth’s biome as any extractive and parasitic human interactions with it. The biodiversity that is being pushed and scraped, sprayed and buzzed back to the literal margins of civilization is being reduced to a cut here style dotted line and our experiments with this work are really explorations of our roles in the threshold of the new-normal, or, the human-stewarded landscape. “Wildlife corridors” even just sounds institutional, doesn’t it? Almost onomatopoeia oxymoron.
A dieter goes to a surgeon and requests 95 percent of their kidneys and liver removed to get that real-life photoshop bod. The procedure goes fine with 10 lbs gone instantly.*
While the piece is busy with all that exploring of our role in the balanced and optimal relationship between us and our environment, collecting data and reporting feedback, we say one thing and do another and the digger you deep, the holer the deep gets. There is this permaculture concept of using appropriate technology appropriately and this concept piece is a janky life-support system for biodiversity while neither of us are doctors. In our work, and life, we are pleading with ourselves to be better, more tolerant of microbes and humanity, and more human, and less human. We are reverse snow-birding from Florida to come up here to NYC and make work/a living/art. So be sure to tune-in next time, on Studiohydrostaic, when we think about real-life virtual reality -where we live 100 percent off the land and eat all our own poop on a pristine mountain top. Filter-feeders-are-us.
*results not guaranteed. Side-effects may include, but not limited to: unprecedented storm surge, flooding, drought, or other volatile atmospheric conditions, rise in global temperature, erosion, increased air and water pollution, ocean acidification, mass extinction, sinkholes, death, dry eye, rapid and irreversible weight gain due to water retention.
