NIKITA GALE

Conceived to evoke a post-apocalyptic, post-human view of the world, drums and cymbals are arranged in tubs of water in such a way that no single person could play them simultaneously. They are ruins activated by water, which “plays” the drum components endlessly. The work prompts a reflection on nature’s capacity to disrupt and supersede human-designed systems while also serving as a reminder, that, in Gale’s words (taken from the first iteration of the work in HOT WORLD at Reyes|Finn in 2019): “Any fantasy that humanity may have about its future is circumscribed by the reality of rising sea levels and an increasingly hotter atmosphere.”

This work questions what happens to human-scaled technologies when we decenter the human. What happens when other forces or materials fill the absence of the human and animate these systems in unanticipated ways that far exceed the capacity of a singular human body?