March 29th 4pm
panel
Nimrod Astarhan, Matt Siber, Sarah & Joseph Belknap
Three works relate to infrastructure in the Rod Slemmons archive through sensibility, affect, and speculation.
Sarah and Joseph Belknap envision lunar exploration as an act of surrender rather than conquest. Inspired by Neil Armstrong’s desire to “clean up” his footprints, their cyanotypes and sculptural collages reimagine a history where we approach the cosmos with contemplation rather than extraction.
Matthew Siber juxtaposes graphic silhouettes of logging machinery with portraits of ancient Chicago trees that witnessed the era depicted in Darius and Tabitha Kinsey’s archival photographs of extensive, technologically powered logging. His black-and-white imagery questions divergent human valuations—some trees preserved for urban aesthetics, others harvested for construction and energy.
Nimrod Astarhan’s homemade copper solar panels power a system generating ever-shifting blueprint drawings informed by environmental shifts in energy. Their system-as-art is rooted in stochastic properties and ecological symbiosis, envisioning a rewilded computational paradigm.
Together, these artists propose new ways of sensing and relating to the built environment in modern times. Ones where infrastructure becomes not merely functional but a vessel for memory, imagination, and ecological reverence. Their works invite us to question dominant narratives of technological progress, instead offering alternative modes of engagement with our material world that envision more-than-living kinship. Through juxtaposition, translation, and intervention they draw critiques and propositions informed by material in the Slemmons archive—reimagining our relationship with the infrastructures and resources that shape and constrain our lived experience.