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Effective January 1: Masks are Optional in VisArts’ Classrooms and Studios
Figures from a distant future, made of gnarled wood, bark, and hooves, hover in inquiry over an ominous structure. They are lit only by projections of black-and-white video captured over ten years of filming across the United States. Surrounding the figures are ghostly fragments of the chilling and historic “Sandia message,” created by researchers at Sandia National Laboratory to warn future beings about a nuclear waste storage facility, meant to remain in place for 10,000 years.
“This is not a place of honor…No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here…What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us…”
This message was written in the early 1990s for the “Waste Isolation Pilot Plant,” which opened in 1999. However, these carefully crafted warning messages have never been placed at the site. Presumably, we’ll get to it later. Private contractors handling waste at the WIPP have caused radioactive leaks, explosions, and fires; the plant is now threatened by DOGE. This installation serves as a narrative, examining the global, unforeseen consequences of past decisions—as a metaphor for the choices we continue to make today. In the metallic structure of Unforeseen, we evoke the form of the “Demon Core,” a plutonium core that killed two Manhattan Project physicists.
What do we owe future beings?
Can we ensure their safety?
To whom do we give responsibility for that safety?
—Chris Combs and Ceci Cole McInturff
Read the reviews in DisCerning Eye and Washington City Paper!
“This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location… it increases towards a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.”
Ceci Cole McInturff is a sculptor, member of the Otis Street Arts Project, and founder of the former 87FLORIDA non-profit exhibit and performance space in Washington, D.C.
She holds an MFA in Art and Visual Technology from George Mason University; completed two years of MA/Art and the Book study at the Corcoran College of Art+Design; is a former executive with the CBS Television Network; and mother of two sons.
Her work uses unadorned plant and animal materials, speaking to impermanence and a raw alternative beauty.
Chris Combs is an artist based in Washington, D.C and Mount Rainier, Maryland whose sculptural artworks both incorporate and question technologies. Before becoming an artist, he was a photojournalist, a photo editor for National Geographic, a product manager, and managed a media website. As a kid, he wanted to make robots; many years later, he looped back to this. His artwork often incorporates his own videos of natural places.
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