This is part of a series showcasing the work of the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts Class of 2022. Learn more about the program and its graduating cohort here.
Miscellaneous Earth
By Nathan Borradaile Wright
Multichannel video installationOn View: March 28 – April 15 at the Rubenstein Arts Center (Murthy Agora)
Artist Talk: April 8, 8pm
Where is the past, really? What is it made out of? How do we find it? Is it buried somewhere, with all other lost and forgotten things? Could it be hidden under just a thin layer of soil, which would be easily brushed aside if we only knew where to look? Or is it so deep in the earth that months of digging would only reveal its uppermost edge? Maybe it’s been broken into many tiny pieces, and scattered. Maybe the longer it sits in the soil the more it loses shape, dissolving and seeping into the surrounding rock until it has no certain boundaries or recognizable form. How would we know where to start excavation? How would we know when we had found the whole thing?
Miscellaneous Earth is a multichannel video installation exploring our spatial and technological dissociation from the landscape of collective memory. It presents a panoramic window onto a world in motion. Views of New Jersey and Eastern Europe, fragments of the present and past, are incorporated into a tenuous whole. Scanning, searching, and surveilling, Miscellaneous Earth rehearses the struggle of an individual to locate oneself in the immense and uncertain contemporary landscape.
