Septillion

-- thoughts on the werkkk of christine navinnnn

by shawn taylor

We are witness to the massive speed and exponential acceleration of evolution that was sparked by two

pieces of flint and combusted by the industrial revolution. The mass of consumption and subsequent

waste from our libidinal economy has amassed colossal burial mounds across the globe, visible from

outer space, with a highway overpass as a gravestone that reads reads - New York Landfill

Christine Navin employs a stratosphere of biologic and industrial fragments to investigate the midden of

the anthropocene. Her aesthetic positions itself within a constellation of ancient and future vernaculars in

order to reflect on the nature of meaning and interpretation through 21st century processes of knowledge.

A question to ask when decoding Navin's plaster cast 'mosiacs of unswept floor' paintings, is whether the

search engine extension of our brain has begun to let us draw previously unavailable connections to 9/11,

9:11 pm, and the Porsche 911 < >)) or whether it is simply a reincarnation of the base human drive to

extract meanings and connections as we have for thousands of years -------- lying on our backs -

staring at the stars

Anthropologists look at the shores of Maine and make connections between the cracked and discarded

heaps of oyster shells. They describe the lives and practices of the ancient peoples who once inhabited

the landscape. How can we scroll along the timeline to the present - after thousands of years of winds

and ocean waves crashing against the rocks, carrying talismans from our burial mounds and scattering

them atop arrowheads, the pressure fusing plastics with sedimentary rock, the friction grinding graphite

into dust, taking one of the most ancient materials for recording language, forming new -> atmospheric

(hyperobject hieroglyphics]D5= OC

Motorola beepers/// lurking on the beds of landfills are the lobsters of the midden's ecology --

- I| alien

exoskeletons I surviving in an age today that has comparatively passed Millennia since it was first

synced with a single cell phone. Waiting in the dark with damaged antennae until they are harvested.

boiled down. reconsumed.

navin takes our discarded pleasures and recontextualizes them into life masks that signify the bliss of

humanities lifestyle of consumptive overdose. meticulously coating icons with ceramic-plastic-hybrid

exoskeletons. mummifying eras of east coast connoisseurship like a biggie small track. weaving in

between physical and synthetic manipulations. visualizing the incomprehensible mass and quantity of our

septillion landscape.