Tisch Professor Caitlin Berrigan's "Treatise on Imaginary Explosions Vol. I" was recently featured in New Cities, Future Ruins, a four-year curatorial initiative in Dallas, Texas that invites artists, designers, and thinkers to re-imagine and engage the extreme urbanism of America's Western Sun Belt.
Berrigan's project includes an experimental book that considers geological time alongside the deep time of trauma, as well as a film about affective geologies and the idea of becoming mineral. Berrigan also created a series of signs spread throughout the neighborhood just southwest of Jubilee Park and Community Center. Formally in the vernacular of large real estate signs common around Dallas used to advertise for buildable empty lots, Berrigan’s bright neons, jagged hand-drawn forms and hand-written messages depart dramatically from the formula. Berrigan's work is an overlay on the neighborhood, evoking futuristic images of existence alongside catastrophe. For more on Berrigan's own thoughts about their work, click here.
The intiative includes work from Andrew Ross, Teddy Cruz, Cao Fei & Sophia Al-Maria, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Postcommodity, Rodrigo Valenzuela, Lauren Woods, Mary Ellen Carroll, Naima J. Keith, and more.