Image Credits: Dickson Bou

SustainableCities: A Collective Eclipsing. ArtLab Gallery, Western University, London, Ontario.
Curated by Imogen Clendinning
Brigitta Zhao, Philip Gurrey, Michelle Wilson, Theo Jean Cuthand, Danielle Petti, and Jessica Joyce

An eclipse is in sense, a collaboration between two forces, passing across one another from immense distances and meeting in a cosmic dance. In the works of Theo Jean Cuthand, Philip Gurrey, Jessica Joyce, Danielle Petti, Michelle Wilson and Brigitta Zhao, intangible collaborative dynamics play out in acts of creation; in processes of remediation, explorations of materiality, human and non-human relations, interdisciplinary exchange and the use of digital technology, artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure. The eclipse serves as an ontological tool to rethink relations between matter and maker, situating material as not a resource to be mined, but an autonomous entity with its own logics and priorities. These many eclipses rotate and converge between critiques of colonial extraction and pollution, the poetry of minerals, microplastics, corn and rust, and various datafications of the environment.

Partnering with the Free Appropriate Sustainable Technology (FAST) research group in Western Engineering, A Collective Eclipsing features 3-d printing technology and solar power, in a celebration of digital infrastructures that require collaboration between the Sun, the weather, the artist and engineer.

This project is funded by: Western Sustainable Impact Fund, Western Research, Society of Graduate Students, Western Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies, the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, Office of Indigenous Initiatives.