Leaf in Isolation

video and copper coil speaker-leaf installation for the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, 2021

This is a practice in the art of distance. Isolated from where they belong, these leaves are mediated by glass and pixels, wired up like speakers buzzing to connect with their surroundings. If you listen, you can hear them whispering.

A tree is inherently rooted and stable, but leaves are more transient. If they are disconnected from their source, they wither. To dissect their experience, I separated video and audio. The video shows their habitat. The sounds play back their rustling and crunching through the leaves with copper coil speakers. They are reanimated, yet in absence of something.

There is an ephemeral magic to being physically present in a passing moment. When that is disconnected and stripped down to its components, sight and sound, a hollowness emerges. It is in that hollowness that these leaves reside, reaching toward connection, but remaining separate.