Expanding Tahiti, 2011
40" x 20" x 12" ice slab, cartographic projection

Axiom Gallery for New and Experimental Media
Boston, MA, March 2011

Expanding Tahiti presents dynamics of permafrost Arctic communities as they develop in an environment under transformation by tropical culture, using ice and experimental cartography based on local data of crime and births.

Perhaps "Tahiti" is the embodiment of what we lust after (e.g. Melville's "Tahiti", and the "Tahiti" of Godard's Pierrot Le Fou, and Laurie Anderson), a false illusion, while the ocean is a vast embodiment of the harsh truth in life, and the frozen poles are the infinite regions where mankind cannot naturally proliferate, where time does not exist for mankind.

The human race has been working to melt the Polar Eternities since we discovered fire. Ice is the boundary between mankind and infinity. The further away we push the Polar Eternities, the more we can expand and proliferate, in hope of reaching "Tahiti". We expand into areas once covered by ice because we can: ice is water, and water supports life.