Anthropocentric Fossils: On Christine Egaña Navin’s Circling the Square
Installation view of Christine Egaña Navin: Circling the Square at the Yeh Art Gallery, St. John's University, 2022. Photo by Philip Hinge.
Christine Egaña Navin is not intimidated by technology. In her most recent solo exhibition, Circling the Square, she converts six LED screens into roaring A-frame campfires. Dissolving their metallic slickness with the soft texture of surrounding acoustic panels, the warm crackle and pop sounds of a roaring fire envelop the space. There is an atmosphere of serenity, a cozy, yet unsettling familiarity. The more time I spent in the space, the more I noticed how this fusion of technologies––the fire and the screen––activates a lingering psychological dissociation, surfacing questions about how humanity has historically invented and deployed technologies. Through what means, and for what ends.
Egaña Navin’s installation establishes the unusual irony of combining two of humanity’s most crucial technologies: the controlled fire and the screen. The controlled use of fire was likely first developed by Homo sapiens and Neanderthals over 300,000 years ago, and has since been an indispensable tool crucial for human survival. Early controlled use of fire by human species has adapted our behavior and social patterns, as well as increased our capacity for high-quality food preparation, which in turn propels brain use and development. To this day, fire remains a crucial daily technology for most people globally, allowing us to prepare foods for consumption and preservation. Most animal species, including humans, react to the natural phenomenon of fire, often mesmerized by the movement of light, as the light-sensitive cells in our retinas process flickering light against a dark background. It is easy to be humbled by this unpredictable and erratic movement of light, capable of multiplying itself dangerously and endlessly. Egaña Navin’s work evokes the fiery tension between control and chaos, suggestive of the balance necessary to maintain pace while walking a perpetual psychological tightrope. Earlier screen works of Egaña Navin’s include beehives and other natural elements that illuminate and grapple with this tension.
On Youtube, you can find videos of woodburning fireplaces that are over 10 hours long. One of the most popular videos has over 93 million views. Watching controlled fire burns on screens is already a commonplace activity, often played on loop as background atmosphere during the holiday season. Perhaps this is our psychological attempt at creating a sense of comfort through the screen, as the flicker of LED lights aptly mimics the flicker of light of a roaring flame. Screens are our primary comfort devices today, a ubiquitous technology that serves as our interface for social interactions, information gathering, and many other activities of daily life. There is a kind of sensuous intimacy we share with our screens, and this is immediately apparent in Circling the Square, where there is an unusual moment of touch between fires, sounds, and textures.
Installation view of Christine Egaña Navin: Circling the Square at the Yeh Art Gallery, St. John's University, 2022. Photo by Philip Hinge.
Installation view of Christine Egaña Navin: Circling the Square at the Yeh Art Gallery, St. John's University, 2022. Photo by Philip Hinge.
Sometimes the screen is the last face I see before I fall asleep, even as I cuddle in the arms of my partner. In Covid times, the screen cemented its place as the principal medium through which we communicate virtually, each simultaneously separate in our individual planes of alienation. Before the internet, the television screen functioned similarly, as a technology for the actualization of the nuclear family, global neoliberal capitalism, and by extension, the “selling” of the American Dream. I discussed the role of television with the artist, who shared how it was a staple in her household growing up, always “on,” a beloved constant audiovisual presence, like an extra member of the family. Screens, like fire, are equally ubiquitous technologies that extend ideas of comfort and intimacy beyond the implications of their immediate functionality. They suggest human connection, but also the possibility of impending danger, or perhaps a singular power source of energy from which everything begins and ultimately ends. Egaña Navin’s installation pays attention to this, too, as all of the power cords from the monitors and speakers meet elegantly at a single surge protector––coalescing like snakes devouring a single carcass.
Hive. 2019. 9 x 9 x 17."19" LED TV's, 4 channel HD video. Courtesy of the artist.
As a child, Egaña Navin would often join her grandfather on unofficial reconnoitering missions, a military term used to describe the process of surveying your surroundings to gather useful information and resources. Mining the suburban landscape of her youth often involved dumpster diving to retrieve trash and give it a second life. Egaña Navin’s early experiments deconstructing technology began here––by taking apart and fixing old radios and televisions people had thrown away. Although the monitors used in Circling the Square are new, they are similarly deconstructed and reworked. Their frames are laid bare, lacking any indication of a manufacturing brand, instead becoming hacked objects that relay new information. On screen, three high-definition video loops of campfires play endlessly, the satisfying audio reverberating from below and cozily muffled against the soft acoustic panels on the walls. For this work, Egaña Navin appropriates hardware typically used for commercial purposes, like industrial-grade media players for seamless video loops, rubber matting flooring, as well as the expertise and equipment of LaserLion Productions, a commercial video production company based in Orlando, FL. In Circling the Square, these professionalized, commercial elements are in contrast with the elemental images on screen.
Photo courtesy of author.
Filmed in the backwoods of Jacksonville, Florida, Egaña Navin directed the building and cinematography of the fire, which was filmed from all angles. The term “backwoods” brings to mind the sometimes inaccessible, sometimes illicit wooded spaces that function as sites of encounter. Through Circling the Square, I am reminded of the “backwoods” of the Pine Barrens in New Jersey and Florida’s Everglades National Park, and wonder what kinds of secrets these sites hold. These sites embody histories of environmental loss, fear, and decay, where once-functional objects are sometimes abandoned, slowly disintegrating into the surrounding forest landscape.
On a recent hike, I found an old Sharp television nestled in some fallen foliage. The screen had been busted out entirely, its interior wiring exposed to the elements. Retro circular dials and the rectangular box shape dated the device: at least forty years old, almost half a century. Perhaps, like this slowly decomposing model, the A-frame monitors in Egaña Navin’s Circling the Square allude to anthropocentric fossils of metallic decay. Or perhaps they simply evoke our innate, biological desire for comfort and connection, often mediated and facilitated through the screen. If the current Anthropocene epoch begins with the first instances of significant human impact on ecosystems and geology, what will our tech fossils look like 50 years from now? How might fire play a role in the endless progression of time?
—
Christine Egaña Navin: Circling the Square is currently on view at The Yeh Art Gallery, St. John’s University until Sunday, April 9. Further information on Christine Egaña Navin’s work can be found on her website.
Alex Santana is a writer and curator with an interest in conceptual art, political intervention, and public participation. Currently based in New York, she has held research positions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Newcomb Art Museum, and Mana Contemporary. Her interviews and essays have been published by CUE Art Foundation, The Brooklyn Rail, Precog Magazine, Artsy, and The Latinx Project.