The eye is cast out from the surface of the Earth, orbiting briefly through the atmosphere before tears descend like light rain onto the angled screen of the telescope. They fall through layers of historical markers and bodily cross-sections. Fragile—like a butterfly’s wing—the eyelid holds the eyeball close to death. Dying: that inevitable return to the sheath that held us before we first propelled outward. Kicking, pushing back against the innermost wall of the womb, screaming. Into the silence that preceded the first day of this century, or perhaps the last century’s first.

We remain at a threshold: the mutable tipping point of modernism. A fractured rod of fibrous threads arcs across the years, stretching toward the ever-passing—day into night. Across the globe, a ribbon of satellites drifts, guided by an invisible hand. They seduce a swarm of airborne creatures in search of order and direct connection. Fibers in wings, air between extended antennae.

The angle you choose determines the outcome: human and machine—torn apart and bound together again—engaged in a process that pulls the world into a dizzying reverse spin. Propeller, lift me, grant me air beneath these dry wings! Offer me perspective on this unfolding disintegration. Falling. The past. Frightful, frictionless links are keeping me fettered. In the cave beneath the Acropolis, the first drawing of the ruin’s resurrection lies at rest. Sculptures, dress yourselves. It is time to show your best side (from behind, and stripped of color). In the pale morning light, the last fly twitches on the window ledge. Who led you astray, behind the light and into the narrow space between panes of glass?

The inside is now outside, and the reflection mirrors itself in the Moon’s dusty surface. A rounded double is hanging heavy over an erased blue horizon. From the sea she rises carried by a wave that never breaks. Her hand shielding her face (too see and to be seen—a blinding equation). She steps down from the podium, back to the shoreline and the cliff above. Layers of shells, densely compressed, cut with unnerving precision then carried and stacked to form the very stage. Silence. Action—the drama continues still.

(Text by Julia Sjölin)