Unattended Baggage I & II | Suitcases, Timers, Accelerometers, Electronics and Extension Cords | 2017 - 2018

The timers on these suitcases have the potential to count up from 0 to 100 days. Equipped with motion sensors, the clocks tell you how long the object has gone untouched, and resets whenever the suitcase is moved or unplugged; essentially allowing it to keep track of its exact time in a specific place, gathering the inertia of stored time as it sits.

Many objects have the ability to actively claim space. From the personal (physical) baggage that we keep around us, to the public monuments that never change, I am interested in how our concepts of history, and the stories we remember, are largely influenced by the things that are preserved, maintained, unaltered, or allowed to remain still. These things that claim space become ‘natural’ over time, to the point where we can no longer recognize their potential to change. I see a direct relationship between these bags and monuments, because like so many monuments, these bags tell you how long they have occupied the space that they sit in. 

Furthermore, as luggage, these bags allude to the invisible history of so many bodies – often Black, Brown, or indigenous - that were violently (re)moved and (dis)placed in order to create the now “historical” landscape of the United States. From colonization, to the Trail of Tears - from slavery and a failed reconstruction - to gentrification, it seems some bodies have always been 'on the move', their records left behind, and were never allowed to develop new histrories of their own. The reseting function of these timers therefore refers to that temporal reset of a violent nation building that erases the history of preexisting cultures, in favor of a new heroic timeline; a genesis amnesia, that over time forgets what was there before it. 

Finally, I have been told that these objects are somewhat terrifying; the timers on the bags activate our cultural imaginations of bombs from so many violent action movies and TV shows. Moments in history when the bubble bursts, time resets, or things explode, often reign as large in our collective/collected (passed down) memories as any monument might. I think one reason these moments - both large and small - of change can feel so sudden at times, is because of the way we are lulled into a comfortable sense of stagnant time, by those things that never move.

Aware of these various temporal landscapes, these sculptures sit, collect time, and remind us that change can happen in an instant.

This series of sculptures was created in collaboration with my friend, an artist and computer scientist, Jack Doerner.