Output details

Coerced Nature : [Solo Exhibition]

Coerced Nature (CN) is a body of filmic work that explores humanity’s relationship with environment in the context of an increasingly digitized society. CN examines the social disconnect created by screen technologies and our contradictory relationship with science, specifically in the context of global warming. The work poses the question: how do mass media communication affect personal realities and what effect can art language have in translating scientific fact into affective processing?

CN is made in parallel to ‘Here After Now’ (HAN), a project for a climate-responsive public art work exploring the effects of climate extremes through filmic imagery. The significance of both CN and HAN lie in the bringing together of art and climate science to create video works that challenge perceptions of realism and risk. CN is pivotal in bringing these issues to a larger public.

CN's location, the The Rose Art Museum, is an educational and cultural institution focusing on collecting and exhibiting modern and contemporary art with an internationally important collection consisting of works by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Matthew Barney. CN was selected by the curator of collections, Dabney Haily, and shown with a series of public lectures took place alongside a retrospective of Ed Ruscha and an installation by Walead Beshty.

CN achieves originality through the embodiment of a research into ‘suspended trauma’: an exploration of repeatedly witnessing traumatic events via mass media, and the impact of this on how we read images. CN displays pioneering approaches to ‘composite’ video production in the seamless merging of disparate video and still imagery. It is unique in using this method to critique perceptions of realism in moving image.

CN was the result of extensive work with the museum’s curators, collaborators for HAN, and the extended art and science community.