Something Unfinished About Us: Traces of a Particulate Configuration

Something Unfinished About Us: Traces of a Particulate Configuration
May 09 – June 16, 2023

Curated by M Jiang and ***X Lee

A configuration of people, of moving parts, of 433 fragments and 33 cooperating particulates, of these actors coming together for a brief moment in time, never fixed for too long, always piling forward into the continuous aftermath of now, staying just long enough for us to get some information out of them. We flatten each fragment into a data point, and map it out like true paper pushers, or architects, or astronomers, constructing constellations out of disparate stars — these are the random spillovers of a mass-produced black hole that’s been naturalized into invisibility. We are that point that has pinched time, the dot in the hourglass, and from this here and now we’ve configured a mythology of all these glimmering fragments — at once out of our control and deeply, microcosmically, materially connected to our particular situation in space and time, in this world, in our little bodies. We know progress as that lie they tell us before we go to sleep each night, and the past comes at us like a nightmare, as that catastrophe that lurks behind our closed eyes. When we look again we see what’s been latent all along, and we pick it up, in our hands, and we squeeze it, before it all piles up, before it turns to dust again.

It’s been an experiment in curation without direct selection. Every fragment was either submitted by a Particulate or directly encountered by us — in the street, out of free piles, at estate sales, in the world. Attended to, but never chosen outright. Once these fragments were gathered, their arrangement was left up to random selection as well. A bureaucratic identification system leveled each fragment upon retrieval. These limitations helped us stay receptive to our environments, rather than demanding of them. The result is a constellatory blueprint that is both factual and fictional, unique to our situational context. The configurations remain as undefined and airborne as the drifting fragments themselves, like smog, and translate into an interactive, fluid installation that shifts and resettles over the course of the show.

Something Unfinished About Us: Traces of a Particulate Configuration was a curatorial experiment initiated by M Jiang and ***X Lee and the first exhibition on view as part of the 2023 Curator Series. Cooperating Particulates: M + ***X, Rhamier Shaka Balagoon, Sasha Gordon, Rosalie + Barnie , Tara, Julien Nicolosi, Mei Mei + Buttons, Kiki Rosine, Maxwell Barry, Maya , ASV ACID , Josha Michael Paulin, Jax, Kindall Almond, Abrax, Rita Salt, Lola Dement Myers, JMF, DDKK, Emily Manning, W.G.M., Ryan Cardoso, John Garcia , Laith, c.q.l., Summer Ester Orr, Corey Gyll, Coworker Dave, Miyako Bellizzi, Dan Svenokovic.

More photos on our Flickr / Photo collection from S.M.O.G. (Synchronized Mapping of Ghosts) photos here.