MARINA ZURKOW
Items tagged
Extraction
2025
Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz
Animation: Ewan Creed
Research: David Guzman
Architectural installation: Blake Goble
Mural Painting: Frey Stahler and Josiah McCloud
Courtesy bitforms gallery
Documentation photos: Yi Hsuan Lai
Marina Zurkow: Parting Worlds presents three digital works featured both inside the gallery and on the adjacent terrace, each of which explores the inextricable weave of ecological and societal systems. Mesocosm (Wink, TX) (2012) and The Earth Eaters (2025) focus on the environmental consequences of relentless resource extraction. Her installation for the Hyundai Terrace Commission, The River is a Circle (2025), is…
2025
Generative software animation, computer, monitors, custom plinth.
The Earth Eaters is a software-driven animated “fairy tale” that imagines the ongoing cycle of extracting raw materials from the earth to produce weapons of war. In response to the ongoing characterization of ecocide as “collateral damage,” the generative algorithms behind the work create an ever-changing environment that feature islands forming and disintegrating, a menagerie of…
2024
Digital AI prints, generative software works
Software works in collaboration with James Schmitz
Exhibition presented by Wasserman Projects, Detroit, with generous support from the Knight Foundation,
Wasserman Projects (link)
Two-person show with Jasmine Murrell. Curation: Alison Wong Special thanks to Gary Wasserman, Ian Rummell, and John Charnota Photos by PD Rearick, courtesy Wasserman Projects
2023
Custom software (color, silent)
Edition of 5, 1 AP
The Breath Eaters 2.0 is an an animated, custom software artwork that visualizes PM2.5 pollutants produced by wildfire and fossil fuel plant emissions. Inspired by an open source AI image of a World War II propaganda map and presented as a live, generative composition, the work demonstrates how particulate pollution is carried into the high atmosphere…
2023
Custom software (color, silent)
In collaboration with James Schmitz
In collaboration with James Schmitz
Commissioned by Visions 2030: Earth Edition for CalArts, 2023
This version of The Breath Eaters (diptych) offers two varying views of the Earth using data. The work addresses human impact on earth systems, fire management practices, and the planetary poetics of wind.
2022
Digital prints, generative software works
Software works in collaboration with James Schmitz
Exhibited at bitforms gallery, New York
bitforms gallery (link)
World Wind is an exhibition featuring artworks by Marina Zurkow and collaborative, generative pieces by Zurkow and James Schmitz.
2022
Custom software (color, silent)
Edition of 5, 1 AP
The Breath Eaters is an animated, custom software work that visualizes PM2.5 pollutants produced by wildfire and fossil fuel plant emissions. Inspired by a Midjourney image of a world map and presented as a live, generative composition, the work demonstrates how particulate pollution is carried into the high atmosphere and across the globe on currents…
2014
Tasting/Participatory performance for 50 guests
Collaborators: Lucullan Foods
Hosted by Joseph Campana and Timothy Morton, with generous support from The Arts Initiatives Fund and The Humanities Research Center.
Presented by CENHS (Center for Energy & Environmental Research in the Human Sciences @ Rice)
This work is part of the project:
A dinner for 50, co-hosted by philosopher Timothy Morton and poet Joseph Campana, that explored the concept of Deep Time and the multiple million-years-long process of fossil fuel formation, embodied in a seven course meal. The guests were primarily from the academic and arts communities in Houston. The purpose was to field test the effect…
2014
Valerie Vogrin and Marina Zurkow, editors
Published by Punctum Books
https://punctumbooks.com/titles/petroleum-manga/
This work is part of the project:
The Petroleum Manga, first conceived of and rendered as 10-foot banners printed on Tyvek for gallery installation is now reproduced in book form. Originally, manga was used in Japanese to refer to whimsical drawings or picture books. Long before manga was a multi-billion-dollar-a-year comic book industry, there was Hokusai’s thirteen-volume manga, depicting everything from trees…
2013
Tasting/Participatory performance for 50 guests
808 Gallery Boston University
With Lucullan Foods and Michael Connor
Presented by the School of Visual Arts, in collaboration with Boston University’s Programs in Food and Wine.
This work is part of the project:
The French phrase hors d’ouevre literally means “outside of the work,” that is, outside the design of the meal. Petrochemicals infuse our foods, and while these byproducts of petroleum lie outside our designs on eating, they are intimately meshed with the foods we produce, transport and consume.You are invited to a multi-course tasting that invokes…
2013
Tyvek, solvent ink, plastic regrind
Life-size
Unique
This work is part of the project:
All photos by John Berens
2012
Tychem® TK fabric, acrylic , Velcro, rubber, mannekin
Fabrication : Lara Grant
Tychem® TK fabric courtesy of DuPont(tm)
Approx 45” tall
Edition of 5 suits
This work is part of the project:
Dupont’s patented Tychem hazardous materials clean-up suits are used in petroleum industry disaster response to mitigate ecological disasters. These suits have been re-scaled to outfit them for children. These suits are sealed to prevent humans from entering them, thus assuring that no children are harmed in the process.
2012
Participatory performance
In collaboration with Sarah Rothberg
Premiered at New Museum IDEAS CITY
This work is part of the project:
Immortal Plastics (IP) Assessment Services is a performative, methodological procedure which determines the depth of participants’ relations with hydrocarbons and positions participating individuals on a timeline of plastic’s ancient past and indefinite future. 250 million years ago during the Permian Period, marine microorganisms died and accumulated in sediments on the floor of a vast saline…
2012
Two-channel animation, black and white, silent
5 min,12 sec loop
Animation assistance: Lindsay Nordell
Edition of 5
This work is part of the project:
The movement of a pump jack (known colloquially as a “thirsty bird”), and a public water fountain are synchronized in a transitory dance. As the pump pulls oil upward, the water fountain spurts water. An array of archetypal individuals—cowboys and Indians, a father and his son, a county sheriff, a cow, a soldier, a girl…
2012
Single-channel animation, color, silent
Qucktime renders of Processing sketches, custom computers, speedrail, mirror
12 minutes each
Edition 1/5
This work is part of the project:
NeoGeo I-IV is a series of 12-minute Quicktime video captures of algorithmic, moving image work created using the software language Processing. The work visually represents the work of an oil drill as it penetrates through an infinite series of geological layers. The layers of sediment continually auto-generate based on pre-programmed parameters. The videos are mounted and hung…
2012
Single-channel animation, color, sound
2 min 32 sec loop
Edition of 5
This work is part of the project:
Hydrocarbon chains are the base material for all plastics. They know not what they become, they simply proliferate. Extracting and manipulating a clip from The Inside Story of Modern Gasoline, a 1946 industrial film, endless chains of anthropomorphized (and uncomfortably racialized) hydrocarbon molecules dance until they blot out the screen. Hydrocarbons are indeed dispassionately lively actors, taking…
2012
Software-driven animation. 144-hour year-long cycle (never repeats).
Color, animation, sound
Format: Standalone software application on (intel) Mac with monitor / projection
Dimensions variable
Animation in collaboration with Michelle Mayer
Sound in collaboration with Lem Jay Ignacio
Software Developer, Sam Brenner
Original Code Design, Veronique Brossier
Developed through a residency at Diverseworks, Houston, Texas
This work is part of the project:
Spring, Summer, Fall, and WinterFour archival pigment prints on Crane MuseoDimensions 26″ x 44″Available as individual prints, or as a set. Mesocosm (Wink, Texas) is part of an ongoing series of animated landscapes that develop and change over time in response to software-driven data inputs. The title is drawn from the field of environmental science…