MARINA ZURKOW
Items tagged
Public art
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
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…
2024
Broadsheet posters, dimensions variable
Dear Climate (Una Chaudhuri and Marina Zurkow)
Art Souterrain Festival, Montreal. Heather Davis, Curator. Spring 2024
https://festival2024.artsouterrain.com/en/environment-do-you-hear/
This work is part of the project:
Can the Substrate Speak?, a piece created for Art Souterrain, expands a key question in postcolonial studies (“Can the SubalternsSpeak?” Gayatri Spivak), to planetary environmental politics.
2014 – ongoing
posters, sound, installations
Core Collaborators: Una Chaudhuri, Fritz Ertl, Oliver Kellhammer, Marina Zurkow
Web Development: Pat Shiu
Sound Design: Pejk Malinovski
Typography: Nancy Nowacek
Voice Overs: Eliza Foss, Seth Kanor, Jane Cramer
Supported by NYU Visual Arts Initiative Awards
http://www.dearclimate.net
This work is part of the project:
Dear Climate is exploring new modes of address through the creation of a collection of ”inner climate” tools. These tools—posters, audio meditations and letters—are designed to nudge participants toward new relations with the greater-than-human world. The free, downloadable posters use the language of agitprop and a “fast read” to create a jolt of relational suggestion. Alternately,…
2021
Marine debris, plastic bags, metal signs, CNC cut wood, mini-golf turf
In collaboration with Blake Goble, B-Space
Documentation: Jakob Dahlin
Commissioned by Putting Green, NY
https://dearclimate.net/installations/whale-fall-feast
This work is part of the project:
When a whale dies and sinks, its carcass creates an entire ecosystem on the ocean floor, nourishing thousands of organisms. Ocean pollution affects this process and disrupts the food chain, impacting species from krill to whales. Whales are some of the longest living mammals on the planet, with lifespans from 10 to 200 years. When…
2022
Cardboard, paint
In collaboration with Abigail Simon
Presented at the Woodstock Farm Festival, New York
A fun, non-didactic participatory engagement “where nobody wins.”
2022
Custom software, color, silent
8K screen and computer
Dimensions approximately 40′ x 10′
In collaboration with Jim Schmitz
Animation assistance: Ewan Creed
Hudson River consultants: Hudson River Park’s River Project: Hudson River consultants: Carrie Roble, Tina Walsh, Siddhartha Hayes, Toland Kister
Worldbuilding consultants:Una Chaudhuri, Lafayette Cruise, Carolyn Hall, Clarinda Mac Low, Tony Patrick
Commissioned by Google for Pier 57
The animated software-driven work Hudson Follies is a site-specific commission by Google for the lobby of their event space occupying Pier 57 along the Hudson River in Chelsea, Manhattan. It explores an alternate, present-day Hudson River estuary in which happy social and biological ecosystems live in harmony, where humans can interact with the water in…
2021
3 minute video loop, sound
Sound by Scott Reitherman.
Animation assistance: Ewan Creed.
Commissioned by 150 Media Stream, Chicago IL.
https://150mediastream.com/archive/
This work is part of the project:
On view Oct 2021 – Jan 2022, OOzy #2: like oil and water was conformed for a 16K screen in the lobby of 150 Riverside, Chicago. OOzy #2: like oil and water brings into view a sensual—but harsh—mix of kelp, marine organisms, human aquanauts, mermaids, plastics, and oil, who cycle and snake through the 150…
2021
Custom software animation, screens, custom poplar wood pallets
Sound Design: Scott Reitherman. Software: Sam Brenner. Animation: Marina Zurkow and Ewan Creed. Technology: James Schmitz. Documentation: Jakob Dahlin
Curated by Kendal Henry
Commissioned by @artsbrookfield
This work is part of the project:
2020
Site-specific video installation (52 screens) at the Fulton Transit Center, New York
Created in collaboration with Sarah Rothberg
Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design.
Sarah Rothberg and Marina Zurkow’s video project “WHAT IS HAPPENING” at Fulton Center combines site-specific drawings of the transit hub’s architectural elements with text and animated collage. Philosophical queries like “WHAT IS POSSIBLE” or “WHAT IS MOVING” prompt the minds of viewers passing through. These provocations are met with clever visual juxtapositions, such as a doughnut rising…
2019
Cannonball jellyfish, ice plant, kombu seaweed, condiments, laser-cut lettering, signage, tarp, stencil, plants
In collaboration with chef duo Hank and Bean
Commissioned by LENS (Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategy), IOES (Institute of Environment and Sustainability), UCLA
This work is part of the project:
A one-day pop up jellyfish jerky snack shack on the campus of UCLA. Serving Cannonball jellyfish jerky served with a choice of seasoning condiments reflective of 5 diverse regions susceptible to sea level rise: Haiti, the US Gulf coast, Sri Lanka/ S. India, Philippines, and the Netherlands. In addition, the snack shack served “invasive” ice…
2019
Locust and red oak wood, vinyl plaques, lettering
Dear Climate Collective, in collaboration with Jennie Carlisle, Curator and Director of the Smith Gallery, Appalachian State
Fabrication: Roger Atkins of Cove Creek Woodworks
Fresh cut locust and red oak wood donated by Ian Snider of Mountain Works Sustainable Development
Documentation: Cheryl Zibisky
Commissioned by Climate Stories Collaborative at Appalachian State
This work is part of the project:
“What do I need to know for the planet to thrive?” This question animates “Signs, Wonders, Blunders,” an installation of 13 signposts, each with three multi-directional signs, located at interesting and suggestive locations on campus. The signposts use book titles and common phrases to create a set of playful proposals for new ways of understanding…
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
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.
2006
Performance, software, truck, icies, squirrel emcee, lights, web site
In collaboration with Katie Salen and Nancy Nowacek
Tinklepop Music: Lem Jay Ignacio
Designed and produced in collaboration with students and graduates of the San Jose State Cadre Laboratory for New Media
Commissioned for ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge,CADRE / SJSU, and the Montalvo Arts Center Sally and Don Lucas Artists Programs.
Proper Pop Protocol:10 Steps to Achieve Karaoke Wonder 1. Resist the urge to stare at your feet. You’ll miss the cue from the squirrel.2. When attempting to sing Hey Ya by Outkast, remember that vowels too can be words.3. Avoid gazing directly into the mirror ball.4. If you lose your place, make it up.5. Try…
2002-2004
Mobile missions for web, pda & cell phone
In collaboration with Julian Bleecker, Scott Paterson, and Adam Chapman
Eyebeam Atelier, Walker Art Center, Banff Center for the Arts
To cover the world, to cross it in every direction, will only ever be to know a few square meters of it… tiny incursions into disembodied vestiges, small incidental excitements, improbable quests congealed in a mawkish haze a few details of which will remain in our memory. And with these, the sense of the world…
2002
Printed Cards
BLUR is a biannual seminar exploring new creative practices that embrace the pleasure, seduction, and energy of new technologies while calling for deeper reflection and critical awareness of our actions in digital art and culture. BLUR is organized by Creative Time. The New School, and Parsons School of Design. BLUR 02, Power at Play in…