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Katie Paterson, BBC Futures, The Art Of Thinking In Deep Time

Katie Paterson, BBC Futures, The Art Of Thinking In Deep Time

In the second instalment of this three-part series about “deep time”, Journalist and author of The Long View, Richard Fisher, explores the mind-expanding work of Katie Paterson. Fisher considers the briefness of our lives in comparison to the grand timescales of the Earth, investigating Paterson’s Future Library in Oslo, whose books won’t be read until 2114, as well a room in Ingleby where pre-solar dust and Anthropocene detritus merge in a material record which spans all of time.

TED

Katie Paterson on TED: Why connecting to deep time matters to us all

Short-sightedness may be the greatest threat to humanity, says conceptual artist Katie Paterson, whose work engages with deep time – an idea that describes the history of the Earth over a time span of millions of years. In this lively talk, she takes us through her art – a telephone line connected to a melting glacier, maps of dying stars – and presents her latest project: the Future Library, a forested room holding unread manuscripts from famous authors, not to be published or read until the year 2114.

Princeton talk

Artist Talk: Katie Paterson, Princeton University Art Museum

Collaborating with scientists and researchers across the world, Katie Paterson creates projects that consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. Join the artist as she creates a unique sonic journey. We will move from calling a glacier in Iceland to listening to the split-second tone of a star dying in the distant universe to hearing the full recital of a musical score she transmitted to the moon. Paterson will also explore artworks that involve silence, and those that exist entirely in the imagination.

SAIC talk

Katie Paterson’s talk at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) Visiting Artists Program

Katie Paterson is known for her multidisciplinary and conceptually driven work with an emphasis on nature, ecology, geology, and cosmology. Collaborating with scientists and researchers across the world, Paterson’s projects consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. Her artworks make use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic, and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment.

The long time sessions talk

The Long Time Sessions – Art & The Distant Edges Of Time, The Long Time Project

Katie Paterson is one of the leading artists of her generation. Collaborating with scientists and researchers across the world, her work considers our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. She has created projects like All the Dead Stars that maps 27,000 dead stars and Future Library, a newly planted forest of 1,000 trees near Oslo will be tended for 100 years. Each year, an author writes a book and gives it to the library to be buried. The first was Margaret Atwood; the latest is South Korean Han Kang. In 2114, the trees will be harvested to print and reveal Paterson’s anthology of 100 books.  In this session Katie explores her art and the distant edges of time.

What do artists do all day film

What Do Artists Do All Day: Katie Paterson, BBC 4

Katie Paterson and Zeller&Moye’s public artwork, Hollow, is made out of 10,000 samples of different tree species and unveiled in Bristol in early May. This film follows Katie over a ten-month period as she assembles the wood collection and creates the artwork. Sourced from all around the world, her samples include the oldest tree in the world, a tree that survived a nuclear blast and many trees that are now extinct. Katie’s quest to collect tree samples takes her to an arboretum in Scotland and the national wood collection at Kew, to create an artwork designed to inspire wonder at the evolution of trees through time and the fragility of life on our planet.

Who’s afraid of contemporary art

Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art?, BBC 4

Dr James Fox embarks on an open-minded guide for the perplexed and asks ‘What is conceptual art?’, ‘How should we approach it?’ and crucially, ‘Why should we care?’. Roaming between the past, present and future he examines a mind-bending selection of the most influential conceptual ideas and artworks, alongside meeting the leading movers and shakers of today. And who knows? In the end, Dr Fox might find himself unexpectedly seduced by this trickiest of art forms.

Turner contemporary film

A Place That Exists Only In Moonlight: Katie Paterson & JMW Turner | Turner Contemporary

Watch artist Katie Paterson talk about art and science, space and time. See her awe-inspiring artworks inspired by astronomy and cosmology, the imagination, the natural world and the entire universe. In this film, Paterson also discusses her fascination with JMW Turner’s paintings that relate to the natural world, including moonscapes, glaciers, and mountains, and well as both artists’ shared connection with Margate. Paterson notes the astonishing colours of the coastal environment in Thanet, the sunsets and the wild seas.