DUST WARNING: Does Albemarle know about this? 2020-2021. Video installation and performance.
In March 2021, I visited the only active lithium mine in the United States, in Silver Peak, Nevada.
My MFA thesis project is an artwork that explores our contemporary dependency on the metal lithium. Lithium is the lightest metal on Earth and an unseen material in most of our electronic devices. It is vital to our everyday consumption and creation of digital media.
The multiscreen video installation and performance explores landscape and liveness in a lithium mine. Using aesthetic strategies and character-based performance to estrange a site of extractive capitalism, the landscape opens itself to alternative imagining.
Video projection still.
Performance view.
Tonopah Historic Mining Park.
Tonopah, Nevada.
Access road leading to Silver Peak mine.
Tonopah, Nevada.
Central Nevada Museum.
Video projection still.
Installation view.
Video projection still.
Installation view. Antique Califone record players, a four-channel analog mixer, two speakers, 45 rpm vinyl records.
Installation view. Laser cut salvaged wood and metal air vents.
Wall text.
Installation view.