The 2022-23 Platform exhibition engages with the IHC’s public events series theme, Too Much Information, which considers what it means to live in the Information Age. How does the human brain process the ceaseless influx of information in our media-saturated world? How are the capacities for attention and relaxation, and mental and physical health, affected by “information overload”? How are democratic practices, social movements, national policies, and security decisions influenced by the global circulation of data and the ubiquity of misinformation?
These two pieces consider the site of “terrestrial debris” from the 2018 Montecito flood that was deposited on Goleta Beach, a place of rest and enjoyment for the UCSB and Santa Barbara communities.
A recently released study from UCSB researchers titled “Distribution of terrestrial organic material in intertidal and nearshore marine sediment due to debris flow response efforts” traced how the fire-ravaged vegetation, silt, and rocks that were dumped (“distributed”) on the beach travelled as it was dispersed “naturally” over time, which raises question as to the ecological impacts of the “distribution” on the marine environment.
I consider the beauty and serenity of the now “clean” and restored beach, and effects of the 2018 natural disaster which continue, even if invisible; and how the community lives in that simultaneous juxtaposition of disaster and normalcy.
This project engages with broader issues of loss and grief around the effects of human devastation of the environment and what are now commonly called “natural disasters,” which includes the decimation of micro-ecosystems, species genocide (commonly called “extinction”), social conflict from human migration (war), and rising sea levels, to name a few.
I am interested in the ways in which humans acknowledge and deny our culpability, agency, and helplessness in the face of change that is so much larger than any one person or community can influence, control, or “fix”; and how we exist as corporeal bodies within a material environment, yet simultaneously deny and distance our bodies and selves from that tangible sensory reality. In considering loss and grief, I wonder about the ways humans can create right relationship with the natural world and our more-than-human co-inhabitants.
