And Here You Are Holding On
Well Projects is excited to present ‘And Here You Are, Holding On’, a duo show with new works by Milo Creese and Billy Fraser, curated by Kris Lock. Through exploration of the coactive relationship between science fiction and science fact, ‘And Here You Are, Holding On’ examines the very human desire to engage with scenarios in which we experience the unimaginable, and the shift in awareness that occurs when the unimaginable becomes the real.
In 1968 the Apollo 8 became the first crewed spacecraft in history to escape Earth’s gravity, and after a 70 hour journey, the first to fall into orbit around the moon. As the spacecraft approached the end of its journey, astronaut William Anders became the first person in history to witness an ‘Earthrise’ as the earth emerged from behind the lunar horizon. This new perspective of the earth as a tiny blue dot hanging in the void has been described as a crucial moment in the relationship between the planet and its human inhabitants. In most cases, the realisation of profound isolation has engendered a sense of unity and responsibility for the environment, but some see these images as a symptom of capitalist acceleration, giving a false sense of independence from our world.
Post Earthrise, cosmological interactions have become an everyday experience for a large proportion of humanity. We ping messages from satellite to satellite on a daily basis. We navigate through gps. We hover over the earth looking down through our screens. All the while, earthrise shimmers in the back of our minds both as a symbol of vulnerability and a milestone for progress.
Billy Fraser contemplates the relationship between industrialisation and the cosmos in a series of 6 new works. Fraser employs alternative processes and materials including super heated sand, aerogel, raw moonstone and vanta black pigment, that push the boundaries of materiality. Extending from humanity’s earliest cosmological experiences with starry constellations to modern advancements in space exploration, these works present a celestial timeline, representative of our changing relationship with planet earth; a vision of ourselves, reflected back from the heavens.
Milo Creese’s new film ‘Pandea Child’ makes use of similarly reflective mechanisms; in Pandea Child a polymorphic narrator lets you know that everything will be ok as they are absorbed into the hive mind ecosystem of an alien planet. The film mediates on the notion of a complete sensory shift, in which the new senses of an alien body begin to shade over into a new kind of language and a new kind of communication.
As you follow the narrator’s experiences through a textural soundscape, a host of tentacular forms fade in and out of focus. Silicon valley lifestyle brand melodies give way to crunchy body horror as the narrator sighs – ‘a thought for every organism you can see, one for every atom maybe’. ‘Pandea Child’ imagines becoming a world and thinking with all beings at once, and we can see, reflected in the image of this holobiont alien planet, a vision of solidarity with our pale blue dot.
