What is it?
In collaboration with Ceci Cole McInturff:
A figure from far in the future, of gnarled wood, bark, and hooves, hovers in inquiry over an ominous steel ball.
It is lit only by projections of black-and-white video captured over ten years of filming throughout the United States.
Above the figure are ghostly fragments of the chilling and historic “Sandia message,” intended by researchers at Sandia National Laboratory to ward off future beings from a nuclear waste storage facility for 10,000 years.
*“This is not a place of honor…
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here…
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us…”*
This message was written in the early 1990s for the “Waste Improvement Pilot Plant,” which opened in 1999. But in 2025, these carefully crafted warning messages have never actually been placed at the site. Presumably, we will get to it later.
Private contractors handling waste at the W.I.P.P. have caused radioactive leaks, explosions, and fires; the plant is newly threatened by DOGE.
“Sylvan” is a sculptural, narrative installation, examining the global, unforeseen consequences of decisions made in the past—and as metaphor to decisions being made today.
What do we owe future beings?
Can we ensure their safety?
To whom do we give responsibility for that safety?
—Chris Combs and Ceci Cole McInturff
