Memory through Maintenance Study 001 by Kira Clingen

Archive Mode. Call BAA Biennial Next 2020 ended on 8/14/20, 11:58 PM. Call settings are read only. See Current Open Calls

Memory through Maintenance Study 001

This photogrammetry image is a composite image of 67 views of in-progress brick restoration work of Temple 113 in Bagan, Myanmar, a UNESCO heritage site including thousands of brick stupas and pagodas that have been built and rebuilt over the past thousand years by local people in an act of ongoing memory through maintenance. This 3-dimensional composite image is then further distorted into a series of points with an assigned color value and exported as a 2-dimensional rendering. The act of producing the image by documenting, recording, compositing, and processing is parallel to the reconstruction work undertaken on the temples, which suggests an ethic of care, regeneration and a commitment to working with the existing built environment, as opposed to demolishing and building anew. While this ethic is not novel, it is next.

Kira Clingen

Photography 8 x 10 x 0.05 $100.00

Artist Statement:

My work explores the active expression of memory through ongoing processes of maintenance and care in the landscape. For the past five years, I have explored the neologism solastalgia, meaning an emotional distress caused by environmental change. Growing up on the coast, I identify my sense of solastalgia with coastal climate change - storm surges, sea level rise and increasing temperatures. In my work, I posit that solastalgia can be challenged through repetitive acts of care, or maintenance tasks in landscapes, from the scale of a single brick to a forest. In my work, what's next is not a reinvention or tabula rasa, it is a willingness to grapple and work with the present condition through acts of care and detailed study.