Installed at the artist residency, lower_cavity (l_c)
Siphon (Lower Cavity), 2022
The installation, Siphon, was created during an artist residency at Lower Cavity in Western Massachusetts in the Summer of 2002. The work was installed in and around the pulping pits in a former paper mill. The work investigates deep time and the relationship between resources, technology and climate.
The exhibition features a 3D animation of a perpetual motion machine siphoning water from itself installed in front of massive wooden gears that once powered the mill, a machine that collects water from the air from one chamber and deposits it in a glass vessel in the adjoining chamber, and an installation in a 3rd chamber featuring a paper sculpture formed by a dinosaur footprint in sandstone a couple miles away, a pigeon feather on a shelf, and a mercury-in-glass thermometer tracing the subterranean temperature.
The city of Holyoke was built in the middle of the nineteenth century around a system of canals that provided power for many industrial mills. The city itself represents a harnessing of geologic/hydro forces that in turn became an organizational force when it came to the city layout and the humans inhabiting and maintaining the mechanisms within the architectural structures.
During my residency in July/August 2022, the region was under a heat advisory warning issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Heat index values up to 102 were common throughout the region.
While in residence, I continued my research focused on technology and geologic time. The history of Holyoke and the history of technology became intertwined. First through a reading of John McPhearsons, Assembling California, and then through both a historical survey of Holyoke and a very material investigation of my surroundings.
I made a site specific installation in the bowels of the building in the paper pulping pits next to the decomposing wooden supports and massive gears of the mill. The water from the canals powering the city still run under the building.
