Zone of Loss
Zone of Loss invites audiences to confront nonhuman agency through a phenomenological engagement with the subterranean. A solemn monument to the soil profile and its E horizon, or the zone where organic matter is lost, the installation redirects attention to the geological processes that occur independent of human action. Sound recordings of burrowing earthworms produce the experience of decelerating time, alluding to the decay and transformation slowly transpiring beneath the ground. Through its scale and sonic dimensions, it interrogates the dominant ideological conceptions of the land by forcing a shift away from unexamined perspective of ordinary experience. It places the human in a subordinate position to planetary physics while creating a space to mourn the loss of soil and possibility associated with our failed stewardship of the land.
This project was made possible with funds from The Southampton Arts Center, The Puffin Foundation, and the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by The Huntington Arts Council, Inc.