Greetings from A nature documentary. 

The process of breaking apart reveals our unknown parts. The way something breaks apart makes turns inside out, and offers us a chance to reassemble. In this exhibit, I play with the transformational capacity of discarded material, much of which will not break down in our lifetimes and many more lifetimes to follow. How can decomposition become a strategy for meaning making with material that refuses to actually decompose? What relationship do we have with its transformation? The video and collages feature sculptural objects created from repurposed materials that are part of the invisible infrastructure of our lives, such as packaging material and containers for produce, inviting you to recognize your entanglement with their material afterlives. 

 A nature documentary meditates on landscape on film and pokes at the borders of documentary as a genre. If documentary is meant to provide a record of something, then what is the responsibility of the one who records? If to record is the process by which we repeat until committed to memory, then documentary is the medium of creating memory, and memory is imperfect and personal. I assemble a transforming world inspired by Jill Johnston’s definition of intermedia, articulated as, “Re-integration. The everything as everything. The organism as totally illegal. The legality of nothing but pleasure.” I get intimate with everyday materials through commitment to DIY queer aesthetics. Resisting internalized perfectionism that hungers for polished and sanitized art products, residues of my process litter my works, highlighting the unfinished or mistake: a misread line, a poorly lit green screen, scuff marks, eraser crumbs. 

Drawing inspiration from structural films, experimental landscape films, and contemporary trans filmmakers like Louise Weard, I create video works the reveal the process of their making, and I explore the process of breaking apart to lead to something unknown.

You’re invited to experience this space as a world still becoming. 

Prompts

What is the opposite of nature, and how do we define nature without placing ourselves at the center?

How do you define the surprise when blue becomes pink but you can’t be sure when or where it happened?

What is lost in moving toward predetermined outcome?

What is unfixable?

When you listen closely to the breath of the object, what does the exhale reveal to you about the inner workings of that object? About its most critical or formative desires?