Charles Stankievech. The Eye of Silence Series, 2022. Video Still.
The Desert Turned to Glass
Charles Stankievech
March 2 – May 7, 2023
Commemorating the centenary of the planetarium as an architectural type, Contemporary Calgary presents an ambitious project by acclaimed Canadian artist Charles Stankievech.
The Desert Turned to Glass forms a place where the cosmic and the chthonic collide. A transmedia installation that inhabits both the projection room of the planetarium’s dome and the subterranean space below, the visitor experiences a stratified ecosystem spread across multiple levels within the building, while representing vast distances in space and time.
Thematically, the project explores alternative theories of the origin of life, consciousness and art. Projected onto the overhead dome, a newly commissioned video work marshals high atmospheric video recordings of the Albertan Badlands, the Utah Salt Flats, Icelandic & Japanese volcanoes, and a meteorite crater in the Namibian desert. Visualizing the Earth at the critical moments of its evolution–this presentation speculates about the moment when life on the planet was seeded from a frozen meteorite.
Accompanying the visuals, temporality and timelessness entwine in a sonic fugue, combining both subterranean beats and cosmic noise—inviting the visitor to meditate on deep time, deep space, and deep listening. In dialogue with contemporary scientific research, the exhibition also comprises original field recordings by Stankievech of solar rays (whistling within the earth’s ionosphere), hydrophone recordings of crackling Arctic ice and flowing Yucatan cenotes (created by a meteorite impact), and ambisonic recordings captured within the Canary Islands’ volcanic calderas. In the cavernous space below, bacteria consume pools of petroleum rippling with infrasonic waves, underneath an ultrasonic sound installation for bats.
Spanning the abyss of space and the depths of the earth, The Desert Turned to Glass is an epic meditation on origins, endings, and infinity.
On the evening of the opening, Stankievech will perform a live concert inside the planetarium dome as part of a series of site-specific performances entitled The Glass Key (including in James Turell’s Tree of Light, Merida, Mexico and a volcanic tube at Buenavista Vineyards, Lanzarote).
An accompanying publication edited by Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman is set for release later in 2023.
About the Artist
Charles Stankievech (b. Okotoks, Canada) is an artist, writer and curator, whose award-winning work has been shown at institutions including the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Kunste Werke, Berlin; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; National Gallery of Canada; TBA21, Vienna; as well as several biennials from Venice to SITE Santa Fe. He has lectured at dOCUMENTA (13) and the 8th Berlin Biennale, and his writing has been published by Verso, MIT, Sternberg Press, e-flux, and Princeton Architectural Press. He is an editor of Afterall Journal (U of Chicago Press), a co-founder of the Yukon School of Visual Art, and was Director of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto from 2015-2021, where he is currently Associate Professor. For 2022-23, Stankievech is a visiting researcher in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo.
