Extinction is a fully immersive liquid installation. A visitor enters an enclosed structure. At floor level there is what appears to be a dark circular hole or human sink.

(for a reference see: Anish Kapoor's 'Descent into Limbo' )

It is unclear whether this hole is a solid two dimensional surface, an image, an oily dark passage to another world, or a passage to extinction. To enter the installation the visitor must 'go down the sink' and drop into an immensity of black liquid, where all sense of depth, direction and expanse is lost.

The sink is both a space and a metabolic process capturing, breaking down, or otherwise channeling the waste and effluvia of aggregate aesthetic-, social- and eco-systems. The immersive liquid installation is composed of different chambers - the liquid being a carrier of different temperatures, light, sound and density.

The Installation is made from shipping containers - a reference to the formation of a neo-Pangeas and Gondwanaland, partly attributed to a bio invasion associated with the establishment of a global transport infrastructure (e.g. shipping lanes, road and air networks). The 'black liquid' is an ambiguous substance, at once referencing the materialities (oil and water) of a range of eco-catastrophes, energy sources for systems of mobility, capital and growth, as well as extinction.

 

BEAUBOIS  MCCLURE  &  STEIN