Marina Zurkow, Mesocosm (Wink, Texas), courtesy of bitforms gallery
Mesocosm (Wink, Texas) by Marina Zurkow is an animated landscape that develops and changes over a 146 hour time period in response to software-driven data inputs. The title Mesocosm is drawn from the field of environmental science, referring to simulated ecosystems that allow scientists to observe the natural environment under controlled conditions. In this mesocosm we are observing a large sinkhole based on the “Wink Sink 2”—located on private oil company property in the small town of Wink, Texas—boiling, gushing, flowing and expeling objects including plastic bags, oil and dark clouds. In the background, oil refineries burn off gases in plumes, as an occasional train cuts the horizon. This sinkhole has been widening steadily since it emerged in 2002; here, it appears as a natural geological event worth visiting, complete with picnic rest stop furnishings.
In this animation, although the character elements have been drawn by hand, frame-by-frame, their choreographies are dynamic; the actions dictated by programmed constraints in real-time run by a computer. Like actors called to a stage, the animals, weather and things that constitute this “mesocosm” are triggered statistically in a cycle of 146 hours, with each minute representing one hour of clock time in a calendar. By day the landscape is inhabited by a diversity of bird life, prairie dogs, insects, pronghorn antelope, HazMat workers and—depending on the season—by migrating monarch butterflies, snakes and sandhill cranes. The landscape operates as a Pandora’s box, whose innards vomit up enchanted detritus: the new gems of an industrial sublime.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Marina Zurkow is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn who builds animations and participatory environments that are centered on humans and their relationship to animals, plants and the weather. Engaging audiences using film and video, sculpture, print graphics and public interventions, Zurkow’s work is by turns humorous and contemplative. Through the experience of her projects it is clear that nature has long been a stage upon which we project ourselves, making ourselves the other. Zurkow’s recent series “Friends and Enemies” mines the intersection of bias, inclusion, and kinship in our relations with other species. “Necrocracy” reconstructs the role of hydrocarbons in contemporary landscape and questions the inherited Romantic-era division between the natural and the human. “Crossing the Waters” focuses on climate change and considers catastrophe, picturing ways to imagine nature within us, and nature without us.
Past exhibitions of her work have also been featured at the Montclair Art Museum, NJ; FACT, Liverpool; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Wave Hill, New York; National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Bennington College, Vermont; Borusan Collection, Istanbul; Pacific Northwest College of Art, Oregon; Marian Spore, New York; 01SJ Biennial, San Jose; Brooklyn Academy of Music; Museum of the Moving Image, New York; Creative Time, New York; The Kitchen, New York; Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; Transmediale, Berlin; Eyebeam, New York; Sundance Film Festival, Utah; Rotterdam Film Festival, The Netherlands; and the Seoul Media City Biennial, Korea, among others.
Marina Zurkow is the recipient of a 2011 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She has also been granted awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Creative Capital.
Mesocasm (Wink, Texas), 2012
custom software-driven hand-drawn animation
146-hour cycle (24-minute day, 146-hour year)
color, sound, computer
HazMat Suits for Children, 2012
Tychem® TK fabric, acrylic , Velcro, rubber, mannequin
Tychem® TK fabric courtesy of DuPont™
height: 48" / 122 cm
diameter: 15" / 38 cm
Edition of 5
Courtesy bitforms gallery
In between exhibitions, BRIC House closes its gallery doors to use them as screens for our Garage Door Video Series, which is FREE and open to the public.
Venue Information:
The Stoop at BRIC House is a public cultural gathering space featuring free, drop-in programming, and offering a place to sit, observe, and participate in multi-disciplinary work.
Beginning Nov. 1, 2022, attendees of any BRIC House programming will no longer have to show proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter the building. Masks are encouraged but not required in all BRIC operated spaces. If you have questions regarding this protocol, please email Safety@bricartsmedia.org