Archive of What’s Left Behind (2009)

Archive of What’s Left Behind (2009)

Installation with 7’ tall Plexiglas bin, video, digital photogram, 2 audio stations, vellum banners, blackboard wall, ladder, vinyl text, call-in station with printer, wooden cabinet, metal drawer labels. (2009)

What does the memory of a discipline look like? Where does it reside? What role does failure play?

These are questions I asked of both artists and scientists, focusing not on end goals but rather on events that happen along the way. Merce Cunningham said “If one thinks of dance as an errand to accomplish…one misses the spring along the way.” I looked for that spring in the handwritten notebooks of several painters, media artists, public sculptors, chemists and biologists. I recorded it in individual and group conversations about process and failure, and in the laboratories and studios where these scientists and artists perform their everyday tasks. I also gathered the material refuse from this work: pipettes, empty paint tubes, latex gloves, test tube racks, slides – all the objects that have literally been left behind.

Student Collaborators
Naama Grossbard - blackboard design
Nik Hanselmann - interactive messaging design
Nick Lally - interactive messaging design