Visions of Deep Future

These are a series of works that respond to normative assumptions of technological progress. Building off of previous ethnographic research on the effects of Elon Musk and SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, these works explore the concept of reimagining a Martian subjectivity, a term I use to describe the alienation from land and place which arises in people who live under systems of settler colonialism, neoliberalism, and private property. Inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s works of speculative science fiction, these pieces crafting and foraging as a process oriented approach to amending my own Martian alienation from land-based practices. On the homelands of Ohlone peoples, I gathered pampas grass, a plant that is deeply invasive to coastlines globally, coming from the Pampas region of South America. It inhabits disturbed locations next to railways, highways, fences, and buildings, and it is annually cut and sprayed with herbicide as a way of managing its growth. By pulverizing its fibers into pulp, pulling it into paper sheets, folding it into recognizable consumer packaging, and weaving its sharp leaves into hats, I wanted to perform what future land based cultural practices may feel like. This installation is a culmination of my inquiry and fraught intimacy with the Pacific coast landscape. The grass paper tent serves as an ambiguous home for these ideas, and the projection and glass objects gesture towards a hybrid way of living and making in the deep future. Finally, there is a performance of the Martian foraging for pampas grass, a figure cloaked in a pikachu jorongo and woven pampas grass sombrero, cultural objects that lay in the ambiguity of Martian subjectivity.