100 Seconds to Midnight
The exhibition title, 100 Seconds to Midnight is in reference to the doomsday clock established in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The clock is a symbolic measurement of how close humanity inches towards complete self-destruction. Scientists who specialize in areas such as nuclear technology, politics, climate science, meet bi-annually to discuss global events and determine if they pose a risk to our planet and to humanity. Certain events or policies may be deemed dangerous enough to turn the clock toward midnight, or global catastrophe. On January 23, 2020 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that we are now the closest to midnight since the clock’s conception.
100 Seconds to Midnight features 5 artists and a historian whose work delves into the various facets of human destruction. In Verónica Gerber Bicecci’s series of drawings, The Resistance, she challenges capitalist ideals and the progression that has led into the environmental crisis with animated microorganisms. Anthony Discenza’s Surface Studies merge the geological landscape and the digital, constructing an imagined landscape of a mysterious past. Pairing images of war and destruction with advertisements and industrial landscapes, Adam Caldwell’s paintings react to the multitude of social and political issues. Derek Weisberg creates ceramic figures that consider the cycle of life through deconstructed and reconstructed bodies. Throughout her interdisciplinary practice, Rhonda Holberton uses technology to create environments in which human development recognizably depletes and threatens the physical and natural world. Historian Peter Hick focuses his research on millenarian movements throughout history. The central unifying belief within these movements is that the amoral world as it is known today will cease to exist and be replaced by utopia.
Although time is humanity’s collective limitation, the amount of time that humanity has to exist on the planet can be extended by humanity’s collective effort.
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