Laurie McKenna
Aggregate
Drawings, video, and objects 2020 - Present
AGGREGATE:
1. A whole formed by combining several (typically disparate) elements.
2. A material or structure formed from a loosely compacted mass of fragments or particles.
Work in Progress
Aggregate is supported and made possible with funding from the Bisbee Arts Commission, the Arts Foundation of Tucson and Southern Arizona Creosote StART to Heal Grant, and an award/ mini-grant from the Confluence Center of Creative Inquiry, as part of the Fronteritades program at the University of Arizona, which was supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
Limulus Polethemus
445 million years old...
Limulus Polethemus Horseshoe Crab
...and counting
I grew up with horseshoe crabs, I have always loved them. They have been living in the oceans for 445 million years; they have survived despite heavy human predation. I started drawing them around 2020 (which yes, makes this tee shirt part of my aggregate drawings) when the vaccine was being created as I knew that their blood is used in biomedical processes and I was (am) worried about a tipping point for them.
They represent resilience and fragility.
They ask me to consider time and life not on a self centered scale.
(x)trACTION - 2022
(X)trACTION
2022: A rough cut of the video short "Aggregate" (2021) has been published by the UArizona Libraries' Special Collections within the Family and Community Archives website as part of the Fronteridades program.
The final version of the video Aggregate is part of a program entitled (X)trACTION created by 5 media artists. This group effort was initiated by artist Cathy Lee Crane in 2021 and includes Cathy Lee Crane, Jason Livingston, Nicole Antibe, and Erin Wilkerson. Their work reflects on and maybe even destroys the term “extraction.” The program has been screened in Central School Project, Bisbee, Cornell Cinema, Cornell, NY, and in July at the Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin, Germany.
