Artist Statement

Santa Mònica Art Centre, June 9 to August 21, Public event

Keywords: Cosmology, Ends, Deep time, SciArt

The ongoing research project of which EoE Triptych #1 forms a part builds on parallel obsessions with cosmology, deep time and post-apocalyptic scenarios. Reacting to contemporary disaster rhetoric – the end of humanity or post-terrestrial escapology – it presents the unavoidable future and inescapable apocalypse of the end of the Universe.

The human sense of permanence and significance leads us to imagine futures where we are present, having found ways to dominate nature and conquer space. This project argues that there are events from which there is no escape and that all timelines, including the human one, will come to an end through developing cultural and scientific narratives around the end of the Universe.

Where we imagine permanence and continuity, the Universe presents itself as a fluid entity where stars glow into existence and burn out, where galaxies collide and where eventually all matter will dissipate in a field of cold radiation. The brief existence of stars and planets on the timeline of the Universe is nothing but a momentary glitch in the process of transformation from Big Bang to Heat Death.

An important narrative within the work is the fine balance between knowledge and speculation. While our understanding of the Universe and capacity for prediction is astounding, we still cannot be sure that the next thousand trillion years will be as we imagine. Everything we know so far points to the ending known as heat death, the slow fading of the Univers,e into a field of cold radiation, but how can we know if dark energy, dark matter and quantum fluctuations will change things or not?

And in trying to understand these vast cosmic processes, where do we find the space to examine our humanity? How do we confront the melancholy of imagining a future that we can never experience? How can we attribute meaning and significance to something so fleeting and intangible?

The triptych presents the end of the Universe in three stages; the end of the Solar System, the end of the galaxy and all stars, and the end of the Universe itself.

• Andy Gracie, UK/Spain. Using installation, robotics, sound, video, lighting effects and biological practice, Andy Gracie makes work situated at a point of separation between the arts and the sciences, creating situations of exchange which allow new understandings and knowledge systems to develop. Much of his work involves reactions to and engagements with deep time, eschatology and space research. Employing scientific theory and practice, he questions our relationships with exploration and experiment whilst simultaneously bringing into focus the very relationship between art and science, and how new knowledge is culturally assimilated. Much of his work features an ongoing engagement with semiotics, simulation theory and apocalyptic or post-human scenarios. His work has been exhibited widely and internationally in both solo and group shows and presented at conferences and seminars across the globe, as well as publishing a number of articles and papers. http://hostprods.net