UFOs


Holy the Firm


"What if an artifact functions... not as an object but a window through which we might view other worlds."

- Jacques Vallee


“I don’t know who’s building it, who’s got the technology, who’s got the brains, but there’s something out there that was better than our airplane.”

- David Fravor, Navy pilot


“I have let myself come to rest in the question, and found there what is truly holy ground: a mystery that can neither be ignored nor solved. To me the question is what G I Gurdjieff called ‘holy the firm’: that is to say, the only firm ground in human life is the uneasy ground of question...”

- Jeffrey Kripal, religion scholar


Since the 2017 release of AATIP, the US government’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program acknowledging the existence of unknown objects appearing regularly in the skies, reports of UFO sightings by trained observers have begun appearing in the news media more often, with less ridicule. While UFOs behave in ways current technology can’t account for, what they are remains a source of profound speculation. Many who study the phenomenon believe that at the very least, it’s likely UFOs aren’t green men from space. Gaining insight into their nature and origins may catalyze paradigm shifts in many areas of human understanding, from physics and religion to the nature of consciousness.


This piece imagines an in-process museum installation of artifacts, images, and texts related to the UFO phenomenon. The provisional, early-stage installation reflects the nature of this unstable story, open for speculation, shrouded in layers of mystery and evolving in real time. The tools and daily detritus left by people scattered among the artifacts reflects the fallible, messy process of constructing a narrative that seeks to control or make sense of the story, complicating traditional hierarchies and taxonomies. The provisional nature of the display also mirrors my own ongoing research process.


Research around contemporary sightings of UFOs, particularly those which contextualize these encounters within the framework of folklore and religion, have informed this project. Jacques Vallee’s influential book Passport to Magonia proposes that UFOs are a modern manifestation of a phenomenon which has occurred throughout recorded human history, which in prior ages was ascribed to mythological or supernatural creatures. Vallee, popularly known as the inspiration for the ufologist in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is a proponent of the interdimensional hypothesis, maintaining that UFOs involve visitations from other dimensions which coexist alongside our own. “I would be disappointed if it turns out UFOS are simply visitors from another planet; I think it could be so much more interesting,” Vallee writes. “When witnesses describe something that comes out of nowhere you have to ask what about our ideas of time and space. We know those ideas are very limited and in fact we know they're wrong - the universe couldn't possibly be a neat little universe with three dimensions of space and one dimension of time - that doesn't make sense any more.”


This body of work explores why UFOs have such a hold on popular imagination at this moment in time, and how the complicated history of government obfuscation in America surrounding UFOs sheds light on broader themes like institutional power and authority, the history of conspiracies, cultural unease with uncertainty, and contemporary mythmaking.


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ROADSIDE MEMORIALS




We say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in an obscure and distant future. It does not occur to us that it can have any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.
- Marcel Proust, In Search Of Lost Time, Vol III - The Guermantes Way

Tis a fearful thing, to love what death can touch.
- Yehuda Halevi

 

This series of sculptures is based on photographs I’ve taken of real-life roadside memorials, layering homage upon homage. This project explores how collections of objects in memorials offer a powerful language of loss, love and memory. Roadside memorials are often temporary and collaborative spaces of mourning which function as collision sites, where hierarchies are flattened between the sacred and mundane and private space blurs with public space. This series explores how these places for negotiating grief and trauma become portraits of the deceased, as well as those they have left behind.


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BEDSIDE TABLES



Left​ ​to​ ​its​ ​own​ ​devices,​ ​vision...overlooks​ ​ninety​ ​percent​ ​of​ ​the​ ​world​ ​in​ ​order​ ​to​ ​follow​ ​the​ ​tracks laid​ ​down​ ​for​ ​vision​ ​by​ ​the​ ​world’s​ ​definition​ ​of​ ​spectacle,​ ​and​ ​by​ ​its​ ​own​ ​desires.​ ​[...]​ ​Still​ ​life loves​ ​the​ ​‘so​ ​what’.
-​ ​Norman​ ​Bryson,​ ​​Looking​ ​at​ ​the​ ​Overlooked:​ ​Four​ ​Essays​ ​on​ ​Still​ ​Life​ ​Painting


Attention by itself is an enlarging glass.
- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
- Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library
  
This series of miniature sculptures catalogues​ ​the​ ​objects on​ ​people’s​ ​bedside​ ​tables.​ ​I​ ​began​ ​by​ ​asking​ ​friends​ ​for​ ​pictures​ ​of​ ​their​ ​nightstands,​ ​and later​ ​expanded​ ​the​ ​series​ ​to​ ​include​ ​people across the country.​ ​I​ have been interested for a long time ​in​ ​how​ ​people’s​ ​collections​ ​of stuff create​ ​snapshot​ ​biographies,​ ​and​ ​I​ ​became especially fascinated​ ​by​ ​the​ ​wide​ ​array​ ​of​ ​objects​ ​kept​ ​on​ ​bedside​ ​tables,​ ​where​ ​tissues​ ​and​ ​chapstick jumble ​alongside​ ​sacred mementos. Items​ ​to​ ​screen​ ​out​ ​the​ ​world​ ​(earplugs,​ ​eye​ ​masks,​ ​​sleeping​ ​pills)​ ​are kept​ ​alongside​ ​those​ ​that​ ​invite​ ​the​ ​world​ ​in​ ​(​TV​ ​remotes,​ ​iPads,​ ​phones). 

These​ ​bedside​ ​collections​ ​speak​ ​to​ ​universal​ ​themes,​ ​from​ ​memory and​ ​self​ ​care​ ​to​ ​sex​ ​and​ ​dreams.​ ​But​ ​they​ ​also​ ​create​ ​complicated​ ​individual​ ​portraits​ ​of​ ​their owners,​ ​in​ ​contrast​ ​with​ ​the​ ​more​ ​idealized​ ​and​ ​narrowly​ ​curated​ ​collections​ ​one​ ​might​ ​find​ ​on​ ​a coffee​ ​table​ ​or​ ​other​ ​public​ ​space​ ​in​ ​a​ ​home. We​ ​spend​ ​about​ ​a​ ​third​ ​of​ ​our​ ​lives​ ​asleep:​ ​what​ ​are​ ​the​ ​last​ ​things​ ​we​ ​want​ ​to​ ​see​ ​or​ ​touch before​ ​drifting​ ​off,​ ​and​ ​what​ ​do​ ​we​ ​want​ ​watching​ ​over​ ​us​ ​or​ ​within​ ​arm’s​ ​reach​ ​when​ ​at​ ​our most​ ​physically​ ​vulnerable?​ ​This work catalogues a daily world where routine meets consumer culture and personal history. 


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SPACE JUNK

Inactive satellites, the upper stages of launch vehicles, discarded bits left over from separation, and even frozen clouds of water and tiny flecks of paint all remain in orbit high above Earth's atmosphere. When one piece collides with another, even more debris is released. Over 21,000 pieces of space trash larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters) and half a million bits of junk between 1 cm and 10 cm are estimated to circle the planet. And the number is only predicted to go up. 
- Nola Taylor Redd, Space Junk: Tracking and Removing Orbital Debris

I saw two shooting stars last night, so I wished on them but they were only satellites, is it wrong to wish on space hardware...
- Billy Bragg, A New England

I am old. Everything is old. The planet is old. & there's no way to get rid of all this plastic. & we're shooting the shit into space. I used to want to go into space. For what? To see all this garbage floating by.
- Yuji Agematsu

There'd be time for that later; time to throw condensed-milk cans in the proud Martian canals; time for copies of the New York Times to blow and caper and rustle across the line gray Martian sea-bottoms; time for banana peels and picnic papers in the fluted, delicated ruins of the old Martian valley towns. Plenty of time for that. And he gave a small inward shiver at the thought.
- Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

It does not prevent me from having a terrible need of, shall I say the word - of religion - then I go outside in the night to paint the stars.
- Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo

Lying on our backs, we look up at the night sky. This is where stories began...
​- John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

Constellations​ ​of​ ​cut,​ ​painted​ ​paper​ ​are​ ​installed​ ​directly​ ​into​ ​the​ ​wall​ ​with​ ​pins,​ referencing​ ​natural​ ​specimens and creating an architecture of shadows. Works in a recent series are composed of objects drawn from the mythology of specific constellations, celestial movement, and inventories of daily life. This work is informed by research into how space junk is rapidly accumulating in the earth's atmosphere, out of sight like garbage in landfills but not gone. 


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Do you remember how the night sky of Ischia horrified me? You all said how beautiful it was, but I couldn’t. I smelled an odor of rotten eggs, eggs with a greenish-yellow yolk inside the white and inside the shell, a hard-boiled egg cracked open. I had in my mouth poisoned egg stars, their light had a white, gummy consistency, it stuck to your teeth, along with the gelatinous black of the sky, I crushed it with disgust, I tasted a crackling of grit. Am I clear? Am I making myself clear?
- Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child

We in comparison to that enormous articulation - we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel... a cheap novel. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication... overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the - the stars up here in the - in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it.
- Werner Herzog, The Burden of Dreams


For our ancestors, geometry was in a flower or a crystal, and it was precisely the fixed and unmoving that spoke to them of eternal values in a world of change. The world was chaotic and turbulent enough... that chaos could not hold out the fascination it now does to our worldwide bureaucracies of routine-operational science.
- William Irwin Thompson, Rapunzel: Cosmology Lost


In Roswell, some of humanity’s foundational yearnings hide in plain sight. Look no farther than the tourist-trap T-shirt rack: “The truth is out there.” “I want to believe.”
- Luke Sharrett, Roswell's Mysteries are Life's Mysteries

Until the aliens arrive and we have a non human outside to be solitaristic against, we have a problem about the species at the level of solidarity.
- Kwame Anthony Appich


I want to be frank with you Mr. Klatuu. Our world, at the moment, is full of tensions and suspicions. In the present international situation, such a meeting would be quite impossible.
- The Day the Earth Stood Still

We're going to Mars because it gives us a reason to change.
- Nikki Giovanni

I think it's important to have a future that's inspiring and appealing. Like why do you want to live? What's the point? What do you love about the future? If we're not out there... if the future doesn't include being out there among the stars and being a multi planet species... I find that incredibly depressing.
- Elon Musk

At Buy-N-Large, space is the final funtier.
- WALL-E

I think the moon is vulnerable to humanity and I think we have an analogy there with the high seas and space debris... human exploitation goes much faster than legal provisions.
- Joanne Wheeler, space lawyer, CMS

I, for one, do not want to go to sleep by the light of a Communist moon.
- The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe

It's only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea... It's a Barnum and Bailey world, just as phony as it can be. But it wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me.
- It's Only a Paper Moon, written by E. Y. Harburg and Billy Rose

The moon goes through its phases as its breathing hole gets successively opened and stopped up.
- Anaximander, quoted in The Moon and the Western Imagination, Scott L. Montgomery

SPACE
OPEN SPACE
ENCLOSED SPACE
OUTER SPACE
SPACE SUIT
SPACE AGE
LIVING SPACE
LACK OF SPACE
SPACE ODYSSEY
SPACE OUT
STARING INTO SPACE
BLANK SPACE

- Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, George Perec

4, 3, 2, 1: Earth below us, drifting falling, floating weightless, calling calling home...
- Major Tom, Peter Schilling

Eco: Homer's work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that. We have always been fascinated by infinite space, by the endless stars and by galaxies upon galaxies. How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see. Lovers are in the same position. They experience a deficiency of language, a lack of words to express their feelings. But do lovers ever stop trying to do so? They create lists: Your eyes are so beautiful, and so is your mouth, and your collarbone … One could go into great detail.
SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can't be realistically completed?
Eco: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.
- Umberto Eco interview in Das Spiegel

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"how does one commemorate the ordinary?"

Tantivy's desk is neat, Slothrop's is a godawful mess. It hasn't been cleaned down to the original wood surface since 1942. Things have fallen roughly into layers, over a base of bureaucratic smegma that sifts steadily to the bottom, made up of millions of tiny red and brown curls of rubber eraser, pencil shavings, dried tea or coffee stains, traces of sugar and Household Milk, much cigarette ash, a scatter of paperclips, Zippo flints, rubber bands, staples, cigarette butts and crumpled packs, stray pencils, an empty Kreml hair tonic bottle, lost pieces to different jigsaw puzzles showing parts of the amber left eye of a Weimeraner...
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Because it was done principally on wood, nothing remains of Greek painting from antiquity / In 1889, the Spanish demand Goya's remains, dead and buried in Bordeaux in 1829; the body, without the head, is returned to Spain / The first, unfinished version of Jean Giono's The Song of the World was stolen from him in 1933 / On December 10, 1853, a fire ravaged the warehouses of Harper, Herman Melville's publisher, and destroyed the entire stock; demand was weak and no novel by Melville would be reprinted in his lifetime...
- Henri Lefebvre, The Missing Pieces

The earliest small book was the Diurnale Moguntium, printed by Peter Schoeffer in Mainz in 1468. From the beginning, the miniature book speaks of infinite time, of the time of labor, lost in its multiplicity, and of the time of the world, collapsed within a minimum of physical space.
- Susan Stewart, On Longing

The "living" [curiosity] cabinet, like the knowledge it so aptly represented, was, to paraphrase Foucault, a thing of sand. It was the context from which one could interpret and track the flow and movements of these resemblances and similitudes.
- David L. Martin, Curious Visions of Modernity

How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue...
- George Perec, The Infra-ordinary

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.
- Alice Munro

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
- John Muir

Get to know your garbage.
- Don DeLillo, Underworld

The sourball of every revolution: after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?
- Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maintenance Art Manifesto

Like the bear who went over the mountain, I went out to see what I could see. And, I might as well warn you, all that I could see was the other side of the mountain: more of same.
- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek


But then I see a horse lying on the side of the road and think You are sleeping, you are sleeping, I will make you be sleeping. But if I didn't make the ham flowers, how can I make him get up? I made the ham flowers. Get up, dear animal. Here is your pasture flecked with pink, your oily river, your bleeding barn. Decide what to look at and how. If you lower your lashes, the blood looks like mud. If you stay, I will find you fresh hay.
- Matthea Harvey, Implications for Modern Life

I don't know exactly what a prayer is / I do know how to pay attention / how to fall down into the grass / how to kneel down in the grass/ ... Tell me, what else should I have done? / Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
- Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

He lay down behind the blade of grass
To enlarge the sky.
- Noel Bureau, Les mains tendeus

"Oh," I say and fumble for my wallet. The oil cans stacked against an old truck tire are wordless, hard, collusive. But the triangular plastic flags strung at one end of the island flutter and ripple in the wind, flapping to get my attention, my compassion, like things that seem to want to sing but can't, things that almost tear themselves in trying to fly, like rainbow-colored birds, hung by string and their own feet.
- Lorrie Moore, What is Seized


How does one commemorate the ordinary? I thanked the spoon for being a spoon and finished my stew. How does one get through a difficult time? How does a son properly mourn his mother? It helps to run the errands, to get shit done. I washed that spoon, dried it and put it back in the drawer.
- Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have To Say You Love Me

"You probably need to eat something," the baker said. "I hope you'll eat some of my hot rolls. You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this," he said.
- Raymond Carver, A Small Good Thing

"Little things really belong to you," she said, folding the fan. "They don't have to be left behind. You can carry them in a shoebox."
"Carry them where to?"
"Why wherever you go. You might be gone a long time."
- Truman Capote, In Cold Blood


When we saw the pattern, we took the kids out of school. Broke out the special water. Two churches linked by a sudden alley through the corn. As the Hopi myth fortells. A massive loss of technology. A spider leaves a string between two points. Think about it. From the duster it appears a thing of glory. Makes you reconsider the whole idea of property. Stems inside formations have blown nodes. Explain that, Mr TV. Part of the confusion involves words. We wake up with mud on our feet. The other part is just the way we are. Scared of the new when it's thousands of years old. If you have never seen a sleeping toddler crawl beyond the lip of porch light, zip it. If my meaning is clear, it's already too late. For God's sake, people. Open your hearts.
- Ben Lerner, Angle of Yaw