In the Liquid Desert

In the Liquid Desert is chiefly a work of video art inspired by a hypothetical – but very possible – future in which decades of drought and wildfires have rendered the Great Basin region (Nevada and Utah in the United States) inhospitable to human life.

The film unfolds as an exchange of messages sent over satellite networks between Nova, who has stayed behind to live alone with her small son on the shore of the lifeless Great Salt Lake, and her geologist friend Sam, who migrated along with millions of others to the Great Lakes region. Nova’s understanding of herself and her relationship to the land changes radically throughout these messages, as she becomes viscerally aware of her embeddedness in material cycles and as she comes to think more on geologic timescales. This work uses human narrative and the low-tech of simple message exchange, to focus awareness on the geologic flow of matter, the processes of the natural world that will continue independent of human survival, and how deeply embedded we are in these cycles and processes that we frequently ignore.

American artist Collin Bradford makes video works, photographs, sculptural objects, drawings, and other artistic forms.

They each incorporate his exploration of how we understand and relate to the land we inhabit and how language relates to our understanding of ourselves in the land. He has lived all over the United States and currently resides and works in Utah. In his own words, ‘…making art is a way for me to grapple with the world around me. To be vulnerably honest, in the face of terror (coming environmental devastation, ongoing injustice, etc.) making art is a way of trying to learn to love the world.’

‘After living most of my life in the lush Great Lakes region of the United States, in my late 30s I moved to the desert of the Intermountain West where geologic time is manifest all around me. Human presence in this land since the arrival of Europeans has involved nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons testing, massive feats of geo-engineering to irrigate the desert, mind-boggling mineral extraction, and the near erasure of the region’s indigenous peoples. For me this land is a microcosm of humans’ relationship with our planet.’