Death Work (2024)

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

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Underfoot/Overhead (Wasserman Projects)

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

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Desert FeelZ

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.”

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White Line Woodcuts (2023)

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.

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Death Work (2023)

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

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Animal Revolution

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.

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#MSU: A Manifesto For A Multispecies Union

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? 

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Frog Foot Scroll

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.

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Multispecies Revolution #1

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.

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Post-Pastoral #1

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…

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A Liquid Wanting

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.

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CEAP (Center for Environmental and Animal Protection)

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.”

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Making the Best of It: Jellyfish

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.

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General Assembly (Dear Climate)

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.

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Making the Best of It: Dandelion (Potlucks)

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.

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Making the Best of It: Dandelion (Eulogies for the Human Species)

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…

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Making the Best of It: Dandelion

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.

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Mesocósmico (Paulista)

2014

Software-driven animation, outdoor projection

Add’l animation: Sarah Rothberg
Software: Sam Brenner

Commissioned by SPUrban, Sao Paulo, Brasil

São Paulo was built on top of the Mata Atlântica, a formerly vast forest habitat that, in spite of the radical reduction to 8% of its original land cover, still contains a large proportion of unique (endemic) species. In the software-driven animation Mesocósmico (Paulista), aspects of urban life and the surrounding Brazilian rainforest–trees, animals, water–are…

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Gila 2.0: Warding Off the Wolf

2012

Sculptural objects and printed materials

In collaboration with Christie Leece

Commissioned by ISEA 2012 and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance

Gila 2.0: Warding Off the Wolf consists of a “cattle armor system” of predator deterrent devices focused on the wolf based on aversion and deterrent research conducted in animal cognitive behavior and predator control. Our research and design propositions offer a self-defense system for cattle using GPS, sound and olfactory output devices, video sensing, surveillance, and…

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Mesocosm (Northumberland, UK)

2011

Software-driven animation. 146-hour year-long cycle (never repeats).
Color, animation, sound
Format: Flash player/projector on (intel) Mac with monitor / projection
Dimensions variable

Add’l animators: Xue Hou, Andrea Lira, Laewook Kang
Code Design: Veronique Brossier
Occasional Sound: Lem Jay Ignacio
Leigh Bowery modeled by Lawrence Goldhuber
Red squirrel source footage generously bartered for with Nicholas Berger

Developed during a residency at ISIS Arts, Newcastle, Northumberland

Four archival pigment prints on Crane MuseoDimensions 26″ x 44″ Mesocosm (Northumberland, UK) is an algorithmic work, representing the passage of time on the moors of Northeast England. One hour of world time elapses in each minute of screen time, so that one year lasts 146 hours. No cycle is identical to the last, as…

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