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

Unattended Baggage 2017-2023

The Unattended Baggage Series employs the language and aesthetics of transport, tracking, and action movie explosive devices. The use of these tropes is meant to evoke and investigate our own relationships to occupation, agency, and time, along with the intangible presence of suspicion and violence that is ever present in our social spaces and popular culture.

Equipped with with motion sensors and LED timers, these Unattended Baggage devices are able to track the last time they were touched, how many times they've been touched, and how long they've been counting.

The timers on these suitcases have the potential to count up from 0 to 100 days.

Many things and 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 time, and the stories we remember, are largely constructed around the structures 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, these bags also therefore reference our suspicion of change or things that seem out of place.  

Finally, I have been told that these objects are somewhat terrifying; the timers on the bags activate our cultural imaginations of explosive devices from so many news segments, 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 is created in collaboration with my friend, an artist and computer scientist, Jack Doerner.

Unattended Baggage IV, V, & VI
Backpacks, Timers, Accelerometers, Electronics and USB Battery Packs | 2020 - 2021