Study for the Past and Future of the World, No. 1

Jenni Chaidez, Monica Montoya
"Study for the Past and Future of the World, No. 1"
2023

Jean Tinguely's "Study for the End of the World No. 2" represented a bleak view of the future nuclear annihilation of humanity. In this map, we take a more hopeful view, beginning from the point of singularity - the explosion - and looking simultaneously to the prehistoric past and the potential future. What once was coexists with what will be, as dinosaurs roam freely alongside a futuristic hyperspeed car tunnel where once was the freeway. Jean Dry Lake is a lake proper once more, overflowing with a gushing waterfall that extends beyond the confines of the map. The surface of the map is coated in natural materials, from dirt to rocks and twigs, while the surrounding shimmering mountains represent artificial materials. This contrast echoes the opposing energies of past and present, of the natural and the fabricated, clashing and coexisting in the present.

It also serves as a reminder that we are living on what used to exist, that all we truly have is the earth beneath our feet. The edges are burnt away, like treasure maps of old, in a destructive, licking path reminiscent of the violence of Tinguely's explosion. On the floor, the pooling spiral of water represents the cyclical nature of time, and how eventually everything will return to its primordial state. Beyond the nuclear annihilation at the end of the world, perhaps nature will once again cycle back to a prehistoric existence, free from the interference of humans.

Study for the End of the Earth No. 2 (1962)
USGS 7.5 Minute Quadrangle Map
JEAN, NV and HIDDEN VALLEY, NV