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Figures from far in the future, 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 throughout the United States. Around the figures are ghostly fragments of the chilling and historic “Sandia message,” intended by researchers at Sandia National Laboratory to ward off future beings from a nuclear waste storage facility 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. But in 2025, these carefully crafted warning messages have never actually been placed at the site. Presumably, we will get to it later. Private contractors handling waste at the W.I.P.P. have caused radioactive leaks, explosions, and fires; the plant is newly threatened by DOGE. This installation is a narrative, examining the global, unforeseen consequences of decisions made in the past—as metaphor to decisions being made today. In the metallic structure of “Unforeseen,” we invoke 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
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. She maintains two full-time studios in Mount Rainier MD including one with the Otis Street Arts Project. Her work often uses unadorned animal and plant materials, showing in and out of doors at U.S. art spaces and universities on both coasts, including NYC’s NARS Foundation, Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition, Hudson Valley MoCA, and Washington State University; locally at Touchstone Gallery, The Athenaeum, Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, McLean Project for the Arts, Maryland Art Place, Hemphill Artworks’ Carroll Place, Studio Gallery, the then-Corcoran Gallery of Art, the GMU Fenwick Library, and at Connorsmith. Solo exhibits include the Hammond Museum in North Salem NY, Riverviews Artspace in Lynchburg VA, and George Mason University’s Gillespie Gallery.
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 ran 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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