Stephanie Hankey, Michael Uwemedimo and Jordan Weber

Synthetic Landscapes I is grounded in the contaminated earth of the Niger Delta and the engineered soils of the Midwest. The mass of earth we inherit from Delcy Morelos’s Earthly Paradise (exhibited at Biennale Arte 2022) is loamy, fragrant, fertile. We reuse it to make a raw earth floor.
Above this ground is a stretched canopy of algorithmic aerial renderings of our distant sites: satellite imagery, data flows, sensor readings of altered landscapes. Between canopy and ground: visual and sonic layers of agricultural sensor signals, seismic soundings, creature calls, weather, and human voices arranged into an ecological and geological orchestra. Through The Laboratory of the Future, each landscape our installation frames becomes a laboratory to stimulate soil and community: local experiments in the production of a different kind of landscape, exploring not so much who land belongs to as how we belong to the land in these sites of struggle and celebration.

Authorial collaborators
Ana Bonaldo, Klaas Diersmann, John Peterson
Technical collaborators
Alex Braidwood, Barbara Narici, Setiu Jones; Chicoco Collective: Promise Sunday, Cyril Rehoboth, Isaac Harry, Grace Timi; Counterpublic 2023; DensityDesign Lab: María de los Ángeles, Anna Cattaneo, Alessandra Facchin, Jessica Moreschi
Team
Walt Lauridsen, Anna Lyman, Caspar Jones, Lorenzo Parretti
With the additional support of
Walt Lauridsen Foundation, The Loeb Fellowship, Harvard Graduate School of Design