Jacklyn Brickman
Tending Breath (2019)
Film Short – 6 minutes (collaborative work, made with filmmaker Heather Taylor)
Spellbreaker (New Ground) (2019)
Film Short – 9 minutes
Oldwives and Orbits (2019)
Video – 13:12 minutes (loops)
Invisible Labor: breath bed for young plan(e)ts (2019)
Kinetic Sculpture
As a response to and an engagement with common tropes of climate change activism such as “Love Your Mother” (Mother Earth) and “There is No Planet B”, my work asks whether the Earth really is my mother. What does it mean to have interspecies familial relationships that translate human behaviors to plants? And what if humans could harness the wisdom, science and magic of plants to propagate new planets? What types of exploration and worlds would open up? The works submitted for TechnoMEME 2 explore these questions in 4 different ways. Spellbreaker (New Ground) pulls from cultural, magic and scientific information about the Black Walnut and imagines that the walnut, through its own agency, chooses to evolve into a planet.
Tending Breath is a collaborative film short made with Heather Taylor, that follows two suited figures as they move through an experimental space in the Biological Sciences Greenhouse at The Ohio State University. The breath and breadth of large mylar walnuts expand and contract as duties are performed by their attendees, which entangle science fiction and motions of caring to question what cultivating a planet from a single black walnut might look like; a juncture in the progression of a young celestial body; a speculative future that ponders the evolution from plant to planet.
Oldwives and Orbits is a video that blends the knowledge of oldwives in an attempt to ponder the creation of new planets and put them into orbit. My mother taught me to sew and cook. She told me that putting bread in my mouth while cutting onions will absorb the scent of the onion to prevent crying. By using fabric sewing techniques, I meticulously cut apart each layer of an onion and sewed them back together individually. This work intertwines forms of domestic labor and storytelling to speculate the future.
Invisible Labor: Breath Bed for New Plan(e)ts continues the above theme, but in sculptural form. A silver plated 3d print made from a photogrammetry 3d model of a black walnut is enlarged, as if in a plastic planetary growth stage. It rests on a bed with a taught bedsheet, dyed with black walnut ink that appears to be inhaling and exhaling – a comfort for a young planet in the bosom of an invisible body.
Using an array of technological platforms, these works all speak uniquely to the theme of TechnoMEME, opening up interrelationships and speculative possibilities for the future, while commenting on past and current cultural behaviors and suggesting creative scientific endeavors to change the world.
About the Artist
Jacklyn Brickman is a visual artist whose work entangles science fact with fiction to address social and environmental concerns by employing natural objects, processes and technology. Her work spans installation, video and performance, with special interest in cross-disciplinary collaboration and social engagement. Fellowships include The National Academy of Sciences, U.C. Davis and Chaire arts et sciences, The Ohio State University, Jentel Foundation, Popps Packing, National Endowment for the Arts and Erb Family Foundation, Connecting Heritage- Maryland Milestones/ Anacostia Trails Heritage Area and the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center. She has exhibited her work in the US, France, Canada and Slovenia. Brickman is currently based in Columbus, Ohio.