project image
Serena Caffrey
SEPTEMBER 22, 2021 (AUTUMNAL EQUINOX)

first performed on June 21, 2021
artist’s home garden, Los Angeles (Tovaangar), CA
performed three times in 2021

SERENA CAFFREY

Los Angeles, CA / Fayetteville, AR
serena.caffrey@gmail.com
serenacaffrey.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021 (AUTUMNAL EQUINOX)
SERENA CAFFREY

“September 22, 2021 (Autumnal Equinox)” is an endurance-performance-meets-artistic-production that took place from dawn to dusk on the autumnal equinox of 2021, during which I successively exposed ninety-three 12” x 12” sheets of paper coated with a light-sensitive cyanotype emulsion for approximately seven minutes. The resulting blue prints photographically render the shifting shadows of the flowering hibiscus, jasmine, and bougainvillea under which they were made as the sun arced from east to west throughout the day. During the one-to-two-minute periods of rest afforded between the exposures and development, I transcribed my thoughts, numbering these writings in correspondence with the print I was exposing at the time. I also fastidiously tracked the intended and actual exposure times of each print, offering annotations to describe the activities that disrupted the intended production schedule (including “took a shit,” and “changed first bath”—referring to the tubs of water used to rinse exposed prints that must be refreshed after becoming saturated with blue). When I arrived late to place a new print, I noted the tardier time. Rather than a punitive recordkeeping, this time log accounts for how basic bodily functions and the material necessities of the cyanotype process subvert the relentless cycle of production dictated by the project’s score—and capitalist calendars of production more broadly. I learned later that the clock I used to time the exposures was running seven minutes slow, a further testament to the malleability and materiality of time the project seeks to elucidate. I performed this score for the first time on the summer solstice of 2021, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the first iteration of “New Moon Solstice Flower.” “September 22, 2021 (Autumnal Equinox)” marks the continuation of the project into a larger series entitled “Body of Light” that has since continued every equinox and solstice with the same choreographic structure, and hopefully will continue until I die. This project formalizes my ongoing use of drawing, printmaking, and writing as time-based records of performance action, using the subdivided length of a day to meter production choreographies.