This year we will explore the idea of the hyperobject coined by cultural theorist Timothy Morton:

“A hyperobject is a thing so vast in both temporal and spatial terms that we can only see slices of it at a time; hyperobjects come in and out of phase with human time; they end up ‘contaminating’ everything, if we find ourselves inside them.” Timothy Morton

This exhibition began by considering artists whose work evokes the uncanny scale of a hyperobject, especially as a way of reckoning with global warming and understanding ecological connections in nature. Our aim was to build upon our series of exhibitions titled Stream that have traditionally taken place in and around a local stream and have investigated the effects of human activity on the natural environment since 2014. We also took this occasion to bring back a few artists whose work has been significant in defining our curatorial project. If we are, as Morton says, caught in the hyperobject called global warming, what additional physical or social entities might be contributing to the formation of further hyperobjects ? Or as Bruno Latour asks, what can we do to “bring the solid objects of today into the fluid states where their connections with humans may make sense?”

Moving from hyperobject to specific object, the exhibition considers the way objects connect us locally and globally to history, war, labor, community, care and empathy. An exhibition directs the viewer towards a community of objects. From there each viewer can assemble a sort of meaning. Can a community of objects address contemporary environmental and social crises in a meaningful way? Art objects are traditionally saturated with excessive monetary and cultural value that transcends that of everyday objects such as a door, a newspaper or a mason jar. In considering both objects and hyperobjects, theorists like Morton strive to “displace the human from the center of meaning-making”3 or according to Katherine Behar to “treat humans as objects like any other, rather than privileged subjects.”4 By advocating for the vitality of non-human objects we become attentive to needs beyond our narrow selves. We are prompted to take actions in the present for the future preservation of a healthy biosphere.
“Finally, when everything else has failed, the resource of fiction can bring–through
the use of counterfactual history, thought experiments and ‘scientification’–the solid objects of today into the fluid states where their connections with humans may make sense. Here again, sociologists have a lot to learn from artists.” Bruno
Latour

Erin Turner’s work–the latest in a series entitled Strange Weather encapsulates for the viewer a compelling semblance of a hyperobject. Comprised of found and fabricated newspapers and resembling funnels and other shapes representative of tornadoes and storm patterns, Turner addresses the extreme weather that has traditionally defined her home state of Oklahoma, and is increasingly affecting communities worldwide including Vermont. Turner’s work is an effort to create forms that enhance our relationship to landscape and advance our role as stewards of the environment.

In contrast Lia Yujia’s video work Mushrooms, 2023 plunges the viewer to the understory of the boreal forests of Northeast Asia. Liu Yujia “employs a macro lens to capture the light beneath the forest canopy, as well as the ecology surrounding the mushrooms.”6 Capturing this thriving understory where mushrooms, moss, insects and soil combine to form a vast and interconnected ecosystem, Liu Yujia suggests a hopeful narrative along with a caution about deforestation: what lies underfoot in forests can store enormous amounts of carbon.

In Leaves, 2022 Long Pan collects information concerning human impact on the
environment by extracting heavy metals collected by hyperaccumulator plants
from impacted rivers and soils. Flames enable the artist to visualize heavy metal elements in the plants. The ash remains are then used to create glazes that, when applied to a series of ceramic pieces after firing, display a diversity of colors representing different metals. After burning, melting and solidifying, the metals, once invisible, are revealed as observable traces of human activity–micro monuments to the Capitalocene.

Hannah Brontësays her body of work “emphasizes the empowerment of young women–it explores her experience of the world and the interconnectedness between the natural environment with the human body.”7 Neon Oracle, 2022 was originally conceived for an exhibition centered around a video work entitled Powa Wave, 2022, an ode to queerness and surfing: “An element as monumental as the ocean is colonized by this heteropatriarchy” she says, “it should be for everyone but it’s not.”8 Bronte’s̈ banner works, Affirmations during the Apocalypse began as a way to provide “affirmations” in place of advertising or political messages.

Harun Farocki’s 2009 film In Comparison is a documentary without commentary
comprised of scenes from various methods of brickmaking across cultures. Farocki chose the production of bricks as the component element to consider the physical concept of work globally. Moving from the intimate labor where bricks are formed by hand, nearly one at a time, to mechanized labor where the worker’s hands rarely touch the bricks, Farocki’s film outlines the organization of labor, that is, the varied means of production resulting in one of the most basic building materials. This focus on brick making emphasizes the essential role of labor that is meant to disappear in subsequent production across culture and economies.

Patricia Thornley’s MOUTHPIECE, 2024 is a sculptural work consisting of Russian military bugles that have been modified by the artist and are featured in The Ukrainian, a new film by Thornley. The work embodies the desire for identity and expression under an historically oppressive regime. It speaks to the irrational disconnection of the conventions of war, in their lack of redress for the physical impact on architecture, infrastructure, and the environment, and their disregard of psychological trauma. Thornley’s work has often investigated the perpetual
state of war that occupies the U.S.

I am the Warrior is an ongoing project, begun in 2010, by Juneau Projects to create an open exhibition framework to which anyone can contribute. In a statement about this series the artists write, “I am the Warrior is part of our ongoing interest in what it is that, since prehistoric times, has driven humans to creatively express themselves, regardless of commercial needs or pressures.” Spectators are invited to create and share a proposal of what a hyperobject might be and place it in a pocket at one of 5 whimsical “stations” designed by Juneau Projects to reflect their memories of visiting Windham in 2018 when they spent time with the community and experienced firsthand some unique ways of living and working together.

Debra Priestly’s work presented here uses a humble mason jar as a metaphor to explore cultural preservation, memory, ancestry, current events and history. Priestly has said “the canning jar is the locus through which narratives unfold. I am interested in the ways everyday rituals, such as the preparation and consumption of food and the everyday objects used in these rituals, can spark a dialogue....for example, when my grandmother opened a small aqua-blue canning jar of sweet pickles, narratives seem to flow from it.”9 Priestly’s canning jars function as
containers of history; portals that situate the personal within a historical context.

Finally in Tomoe Tsutsumi’s performative work I want to fix your hole the artist humbly repairs for the visitor a garment needing mending. The hole and its repair return an object to usefulness in a gesture of care. The visitors who participate are held in place for the time it takes for Tsutsumi to examine the hole and then to mend it. Generating a conversation between the artist and the participant is the point of Tsutsumi’s work and falls outside of the normal transactional discourse between tailor and customer. The final product is not simply a fixed garment, but also a work of abstract art that bears the handiwork in bold red thread of the artist.

1Timothy Morton. “All Art Is Ecological.” Apple Books. 118
2Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, 82
3Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, 17
4Katherine Behar, Object-Oriented-Feminism, 1
5 Bruno Latour, 82
6 https://www.liuyujiastudio.com
7 https://artguide.com.au/hannah-bronte-on-creating-a-world-to-live-in/
8 https://artguide.com.au/hannah-bronte-on-creating-a-world-to-live-in/
9 https://theoffingmag.com/art/an-interview-with-debra-priestly-artist-as-archivist/