Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

We are a visual arts and design studio focused on creating works that allow us to examine our future selves and question our actions. Using sculpture, designed objects, writing, photography, and digital media, we manifest tangible “worlds” as discursive tools for critically appraising key social, ecological, and technological challenges of our time, such as climate change, the future of work, and the ethics of technology. To do this, we make “quasi” objects: things that could be consumer products but are designed to reveal their potentially adverse consequences.

While at Headlands

Continuing our process of using fictional entities as vehicles for the exploration of prescient topics, we created Multispecies Inc., an organization that makes tools for “multispecies living,” as part of a wider mission to ensure the flourishing of all non-human species. We will explore multispecies future imaginaries that offer a glimpse into a future world of multispecies cohabitation, non-human-centric living, and AI biome modeling. Our aim is to create a series of works that examine and critique our desire to both convene with, and control “nature,” revealing moral dilemmas and opening up these subjects for further discussion. We are currently in the research and development phase for which the location of Headlands, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the biosphere is both subject and muse. While at Headlands we will study the species interactions within the biome and draw out information and inspiration relevant to the project. Another strand of the research for the project concerns experimental living environments, created during and after the counterculture movement. We aim to interview leading figures from the movement who are still living in the Marin County area.