“Human Meteorite” is a project about extinction and creation.

In November 2017, I dug an impact crater into the earth. For this work, I used only hand tools and I dug every day for the duration of one lunar cycle. I gave live transmissions each morning as the Human Meteorite via social media to a globally scattered audience, from my remote location in California. These intimate transmissions contained reflections on the physical, emotional, and spiritual experiences of myself as the Human Meteorite and it gave a window into the performance as it progressed.

“In considering how the impact of a real meteor is a force that transforms the surface of the earth instantly, I imagine myself as having the same potential energy only stretched out over a longer timeframe. Working routinely and gradually by hand I will create the same outcome as the sudden violent act of a celestial meteor impact—reframing the catastrophe as a slow action. This work invokes the meteor collision as an allegory for our collective primal fear of extinction and accepts humans as the perpetrators of the gradual destruction that brings us closer to that end.”

—Human Meteorite

The crater that remains resides in the post-violence moment. It becomes a monument that betrays the vulnerability of our shared existence. There is hope that emerges from witnessing the persistence of the world in the aftermath of disaster. In the moment of impact, the earth itself is transformed, a wound is opened, a void is materialized, and a space is formed for something new to occur. The impact that remains evokes a state of being that can only be known after experience. The stillness of aftermath offers us a space for reflection about how our past became our present. What it doesn’t offer is many clues to the future.