MARINA ZURKOW
Items tagged
Multispecies
2025
Commissioned in 2025 for The Hyundai Terrace at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The River is a Circle is a generative animation that portrays the Hudson River as a layered scene, dividing the view between life above and below the water’s surface. The animated imagery continuously shifts based on algorithmic probabilities, incorporating real-time weather, seasonal…
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 print on Kozo Thick 110 gsm paper, 90” x 36”
Made in collaboration with Dall-e2 and Firefly
Commissioned by Wasserman Projects, Detroit
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
Risograph printed book, 96 pages. Signed. Edition of 250
Published by the Desert Humanities Initiative, Institute for Humanities Research, Arizona State University
Editors: Ron Broglio and Marina Zurkow
Drawings: Marina Zurkow
Commissioned by the Desert Humanities Initiative, Arizona State University
Desert Humanities (link)
This contemplative field guide is “designed to help orient you to the desert, like yoga poses for being with the land.”
2023
White-line woodcuts
Ink on archival paper
Open edition variable
White-line woodcuts are multicolor images printed from a single block of wood. Also called Provincetown prints, they hover between monoprints and Japanese-style multi-block woodcuts.
2023
Untitled 1 – 6
Linocut, two-color
12 x 9 in / 30.5 x 22.9 cm
Open Edition Variable (OE)
Caligo ink on Yasutomo Sketch
2-color hand-carved linocut prints.
2023
Digital print on rice paper + NFT
35.4 x 59.1 in
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
Made in collaboration with Dall-e
Death 1 and Death 2 were originally commissioned by curator Linda Weintraub for Beyond Death, a special issue in the journal Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts
Death Work, entirely created with Dall-e, was originally commissioned by curator Linda Weintraub for Beyond Death, a special issue in the journal Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts
2022
25 drawings
Charcoal on Legion Stonehenge archival paper
18″x24″
Also available as digital prints
Ron Broglio, author. Illustrations, Marina Zurkow
Commissioned by the author. Published by University of Minnesota Press
Animals are staging a revolution—they’re just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, this book threads together news accounts and more in a powerful and timely work of creative, speculative nonfiction that imagines a revolution stirring and asks how humans can be a part of it.
2022
Unpublished article
At this moment of cascading and interconnected crises, a radically different politics is required. our essay is a provocation – part thought experiment, part call to action – that asks: what would it look like to organize a multi-species union?
2022
Digital collage on archival Hahnemühle Bamboo
10 x 50 in / 25.4 x 127 cm
What really goes on in murky streams? An image request of “Japanese scroll painting 1930’s agitprop of a frog eating a man’s foot” would only yield a side-by-side depiction of frog and foot, but not devouring. Zurkow thinks that request must violate the terms of DALL·E 2.
2022
Digital collage on archival Hahnemühle Bamboo
10 x 50 in / 25.4 x 127 cm
In a tribute to Caryl Churchill’s 2000 play “Far Away,” this AI collaboration imagines a world where animals, humans, and machines rise up to battle for an equitable planetary present.
2022
Digital collage on archival Hahnemühle Bamboo
10 x 50 in / 25.4 x 127 cm
This 48” image, influenced by Japanese ink brush scroll paintings, was made using DALL·E 2 to generate a database of unique source material—much like a stack of Life Magazines painstakingly cut and assembled into complex collages. Text requests include calls for 1930’s Japanese scroll paintings and agitprop of “a frog tasting a man’s foot with…
2022
Sound, 28 minutes
Written and Performed by Anna Rose Hopkins and Marina Zurkow
Editing, production, and sound design: Pejk Malinovski
Original sound contributions: Scott Reitherman
Additional vocal performances: Kenneth Bailey, Aaron Burns, Una Chaudhuri, El Glasberg, Aria Michener, Ava Michener, Justin Michener, Liam Michener
ASL interpretation: Darius Doe
Special thanks to Stacy Alaimo, Lindsey Allen, Imani Black, Elizabeth Bishop, Una Chaudhuri, Jon Cohrs, Becca Franks, Christopher Hibma, Henry Fischer, Miles Freeman, Dylan Gauthier, Jennifer Jacquet, Kwonyin, Steve Mentz, Katie Pearl, Jose Rosero, Carrie Roble, Lauren Ruffin, Abigail Simon, Nancy Sowinski, Suzanne Thorpe, and Paola Zanzo
Found sources: Gravity Music, Lao Tzu, Alphonso Lingis, Ennio Morricone, Lalo Schifrin, WeTM, Heathcote Williams
Originally commissioned by the FoodxFilm Festival and the Guild of Future Architects, in support of Good Food For All and the United Nations Food Systems Summit
This work is part of the project:
“A Liquid Wanting” is a 28 minute audio theater work exploring the lives of ocean beings and the ocean itself as a planetary force, prompting listeners to dissolve, mutate and transform as they are led through imagined embodiments—from human to sea cucumber to marine snow to whale.
2018
Digital graphic
In collaboration with Sarah Rothberg
Commissioned by CEAP
https://wp.nyu.edu/ceap/
CEAP commissioned Zurkow and Rothberg to create a primary, scalable illustrative identity for the Center, who “conducts, supports, and disseminates research that contributes to the protection of both animals and the environment.”
2018
Food, performance, props, slide show
In collaboration with Hank and Bean
Supported by Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS) at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES), UCLA, led by Allison Carruth
This work is part of the project:
A dinner and movable feast exploring the edible desertification of the Los Angeles region, one whose contemporary culture still holds dear the sensibility of a Mediterranean diet.
2018
Flags, cedar posts
Core Collaborators: Una Chaudhuri, Fritz Ertl, Oliver Kellhammer, Marina Zurkow
Curated by Nora Lawrence
Documentation: Jerry L. Thompson
Commissioned by Storm King Arts Center, New Windsor, New York
For the “Indicators: Artists on Climate Change” exhibition at Storm King
https://dearclimate.net/installations/general-assembly
This work is part of the project:
We want to create a public space that signals—and celebrates—a future world of multi-species collaboration. At the UN General Assembly, there’s a seat for every nation. In our General Assembly of the future, there’ll be a seat at the table for all species and all things.
2017
Food, dandelions, placemats, writing materials, thoughtful company
In collaboration with Valentine Cadieux and Sarah Libertus
with Jim Bovino/Topos, Courtney Tchida, Tracey Deutsch
All images courtesy Dan Marshall.
Presented at The Good Acre, Minneapolis
Commissioned by Northern Lights.mn and presented as part of Northern Spark, Climate Chaos | Climate Rising, 2016-2017, with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Knight Foundation
This work is part of the project:
The invitation: These Dandelion potlucks provide a community meal space to gather, share food, and explore key questions connecting food and climate change. They’re a more informal chance to add to the meal story sharing toolkit that Making the Best of It has been cultivating.
2017
Dandelions, beets, custom structure, sod, music, paper, costumes, banners
In collaboration with Valentine Cadieux, Sarah Libertus, Aaron Marx
Dandelion kvaas by Jim Bovino
Dandelions and more from Courtney Tchida
All images courtesy Dan Marshall
Commissioned by Northern Lights.mn and presented as part of Northern Spark, Climate Chaos | Climate Rising, 2016-2017, with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Knight Foundation
This work is part of the project:
“Join us in a ritual festivity that invites you to become more dandelion. From trans-species oration to cow eulogies to intimate ocean tributes, this is the party of Making the Best of It, a communal service compressed into the space of a toast—to how all of us are making the best of it, now and…
2016
Dandelion leaves, flowers, tincture, custom structures, costumes, tour guides, umbrellas, meadow
In collaboration with Valentine Cadieux, Sarah Petersen, Aaron Marx
All images courtesy Dan Marshall
Commissioned by Northern Lights.mn and presented as part of Northern Spark, Climate Chaos | Climate Rising, 2016-2017, with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Knight Foundation
http://makingthebestofit.today/
This work is part of the project:
Over the course of 16 months in Minneapolis, geographer and social practice artist Valentine Cadieux and Marina Zurkow, with a group of collaborators and participants, explored what it might mean to “make the best of it” (“it” being climate change), using dandelions to think through eating differently, nimbly, with sadness, resilience and even joy.