The Trace of Dawn

The work AN602: Tsar Bomba is a video of manipulated archival footage from the Russian AN602 Hydrogen Bomb Test. This test remains the largest artificial explosion in human history. The flash point of the explosion from the test footage has been slowed down and re-edited to pulsate and go through subtle color shifts before the footage resumes and the mushroom cloud appears. The video was devised to create a more nuanced, contemplative, and anti-spectacular image of nuclear weapons. The video visually and metaphorically addresses the limits of vision inherent in developing and deploying these weapons.

Anthropogenic Horizon is a single-channel video work exploring the concept of the Great Acceleration and the atomic origins of the Anthropocene. The video combines footage of the Operation Dominic nuclear test (Christmas Island, 1962) and the Ilulissat Glacier Calving Event (Western Greenland, 2008) to create a metaphorical anthropogenic landscape. This work was part of the installation “Fragments of the Acceleration” which was developed through a combination of archival research, research into scientific, historical, and cultural perspectives of the Great Acceleration, the Anthropocene, and the climate crisis, as well as an exploration of contemporary perspectives of the climate crisis as represented in broadcast media. The larger installation references the history of the Great Acceleration, the development of climate science, and speaks to the political urgency of our present moment.

Inspired by existing natural environments and carried by the notion of porosity of temporal planes and crossing of geological surfaces, this work is a dive into intermediate landscapes, neither natural nor artificial, beyond human memories. 

Light and sound as waves that propagate, occupy and mobilize space
even beyond our human physical sensors
technological devices as emitters of complex frequency and light programming
that pass through us,
resonate among themselves and also in us,
in a sea of noise, what frequencies do we choose to tune in to?
moving all that is still
to vibrate in resonance
bright and loud.

'La tierra de mi madre' is a short film sprung from Orange Grove Dance's performance Tetralogy '4 Recurring Dreams'. The four part series of works stand as mythopoetic research into personal memories and stories of one family’s migration from Cuba in 1980.

"Evening was quickly turning to night as the boat pulled off the dock. The captain handed each person a glow stick. He broke his and told everyone aboard, 'If we capsize on this journey to the US make sure to illuminate your glow stick so that you have a better chance of being found in the ocean.' And with that my family watched the lights of Cuba fade away in the distance, the only land they had ever known. Only left with each other, the darkness of the night, and a few distant stars reflecting off the water. My mother tells of a darkness she had never experienced before. " 
- Colette Krogol (Co-Director/Choreographer)