Forecasts & Elegies
Spring 2025 Solo Exhibition at Nikki at Mehle in Arabi, LA
I have developed a speculative, fictitious film concept to act as a vehicle to examine America’s modern dependence on extraction as it decimates the natural world. Through my investigations of renewable energy, grief and de-growth movements, I became interested in the idea of constructing a narrative of a 2012 science fiction film, entitled Big Lith , that relates American reliance on extraction to a surveillance state, but wasn’t distributed due to shadowy, moneyed interests.
Photos from the exhibition, as well as video excerpts of the reading for the closing event, below.
The fictive synopsis:
“The year is 2037, twenty years before the figurative year that scientists conjecture as the tipping point–for sea level rise, dramatic cooling in Europe, the Amazon rainforest turning into a savannah, a windfall of extinctions. Our scene is set in the Allied Federation of Capital, FKA USA. Capitalism continues to look for “green” alternatives for their endless new array of gadgets and technologies that replace classically non-mechanized ones; these new devices require batteries and power (eg. all reading glasses now text and search; paper books are completely replaced by tablets; even things like thermoses and pillows contain AI software to ensure hydration and proper sleep). The need for Lithium to contain the social order and support new technology becomes an American Capitalist addiction, much like its “antiquated” war-hungry thirst for oil. A few concerned young people set out from the city to the desert to investigate and try to topple the Lithium extraction process and uncover the secrets behind it. Who is Big Lithium and how will our unlikely heroes stop them? How is Lithium the key to social control (being surveilled and suppressed through smart phones, and sedating civilians who protest such control) and what is its extraction doing to the communities who depend upon the desert ecologies where it’s found? This film charts the journey of our young protagonists who learn about the history of this land, resistance, and how to create possible utopias via their encounters along the way.”
The Nature of Resources
Lithium is key to our country's plan for a sustainable future. But what happens to the rare Nevada ecosystem that stands between us and this precious material?
In 2023, I accompanied my friend and botanist Peri Lee Pipkin as they worked to collect samples of the extensive rare plants slated for removal through the creation of a new lithium mine in The Silver Peak Valley. Her multi-year thesis project, a historic botanical survey of a 450 square mile valley whose plants had barely been documented but whose geologically elemental yields had been written about in countless volumes, has provided an incredible case for the crucial biodiversity.
