Notes

08-10-2024

Emergence: Art from Life

Japanese American Cultural & Community Center
U.S.A., North America

Michael Jones McKean is showing work at Emergence: Art from Life at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, organized by Fathomers.

The work was developed with assistance from Dr. Stephen Fong, Professor of Chemical and Life Science Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University, in cooperation with the Museu de Leiria, Portugal.

Emergence is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, presented by Getty.

News
12-06-2024

Art Papers: Earth Studies

U.S.A., North America

Michael Jones McKean has published the essay Earth Studies, as part of his guest-edited issue with Art Papers, Reworlding.

News
06-06-2024

Michael Jones McKean + Sarah Higgins in Conversation

U.S.A., North America

Michael Jones McKean will join Art Papers Executive + Artistic Director Sarah Higgins to discuss McKean’s guest edited theme: Reworlding. Higgins and McKean will also chat about how his practices as an artist, a researcher, and an educator informed the theme, particularly Twelve Earths—his planetary sculpture scaled to Earth itself.

News
05-06-2024

Art Papers: Reworlding

U.S.A., North America

Art Papers launched its Spring 2024 issue Reworlding, guest edited by Michael Jones McKean. Reworlding is a thematic exploration of the planetary with contributions by: Michael Jones McKean, Sophie Strand, Haley Mellin + Timur Si-Qin, Del Harrow, Gean Moreno + Stephanie Wakefield, Stephanie Bailey, and a roundtable with Angela Dufresne + Gordon Hall + Arnold Kemp + Michael Jones McKean + Aki Sasamoto + Nato Thompson + Rodrigo Valenzuela

News
08-05-2024

Abrigo do Lagar Velho Adornments

Lapedo Valley
Portugal, Europe

In addition to the skeletal artifacts discovered at Abrigo do Lagar Velho, some ritual adornments made of shells and animal teeth were also discovered.

Here is a portion of our entry for ‘adornment’ from Twelve Earths’ research portal:

“…an adornment—a material thing—can affect the feeling of the wearer, influencing moods and modifying behaviors. In this way, an adornment may take on extradiegetic, talismanic properties wherein a wearer allows themselves to be actively contoured by qualities they believe to be embedded and alive within the adornment. In this way, a simple piece of jewelry, a shell, or new braid can unlock secret psychological dimensions within the wearer, activating dormant chapters of their being.”

Produced by A Lot of Moving Parts and Alex Goss

Process
06-05-2024

Vera C. Rubin Mirror Coating

Cerro Pachón & Tololo
Chile, South America

Congratulations to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory for passing an enormous milestone this past week—the coating of its 52,000 pound, cast glass main reflecting mirror: the M1M3. The mirror you see, spanning over 27 feet across, holds a delicate meniscus of silver. All told, the coating weighs just 64 grams—a few coins worth of metal jingling in your pocket harnessed to make contact with the outer limits of primordial light…

News
09-04-2024

Atlas Obscura Ecliptic Festival

Hot Springs, Arkansas
U.S.A., North America

Michael Jones McKean will be speaking at Atlas Obscura's Ecliptic Festival in Arkansas' Valley of the Vapors, which is not coincidentally within the 'path of totality" to witness a rare total eclipse. The celebration spans over 4 days and promises to be memorable. For more information and tickets, visit Atlas Obscura's event page.

News
02-04-2024

Vera C. Rubin Visualizations

Cerro Pachón & Tololo
Chile, South America

In the process of making our new website, A Lot of Moving Parts studio created a series of visualizations using Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s engineering schematics. Sequenced above is a look inside Rubin’s Telescope Assembly Mount: a structure anchored directly to the Andes mountains’ bedrock holding the mirrors and camera.

Process
07-02-2024

Alternative Art School

U.S.A., North America

Michael Jones McKean will be speaking with Nato Thompson of The Alternative School on Instagram Live. The conversation kicks off a 12:00PM ET on The Alternative School's IG handle: @thealternativeschool

News
11-01-2024

Abrigo do Lagar Velho Illustrations

Lapedo Valley
Portugal, Europe

At Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Twelve Earths’ most recent location, we’re opening a channel to commune more intimately with the diverse stories the site holds. The bones and artifacts found at the site act as scientific tools, but also as psychic vehicles wherein time travel is possible; where bones become a body, one vulnerable, curious, loving, and loved. These more subjective details can be lost within the scientific record, but within the machinations of an artwork, there is an invitation to explore.

As a gesture toward this desire, we commissioned a series of drawings by illustrator Maxfield Schnaufer to help imagine possible moments, realities, and open questions as a poetic, if speculative exercise—an attempt to touch what perhaps will forever be beyond our grasp.

Process
15-12-2023

Publico Article

Portugal
Lapedo Valley, Europe

Portuguese newspaper Publico published an article highlighting Twelve Earths' announcement of Abrigo do Lagar Velho and the work that will come to unfold in the Lapedo Valley.

News
14-11-2023

Abrigo do Lagar Velho

Lapedo Valley
Portugal, Europe

Abrigo do Lagar Velho
o / o o / o o o o o o o

39°45′19.41″N 8°44′6.92″W
Leiria District
Lapedo Valley, Portugal

Twelve Earths’ second announced location is an active archaeological site and Paleolithic rock shelter visited by humans for over a thousand generations.

The discovery of a ceremoniously child buried there 29,000 years ago helped to unlock secrets of who we are—the question of ‘humanity’ at its most profound.

In asking questions of nearly imperceptible contours of bone; tracing forensic clues locked in ancient pollen; probing meanings locked within the delicate carvings of animal teeth; in wondering about our past selves, we unwittingly uncover who we are.

The site preserves this idea, encapsulating it as a message: a reminder stored in bones and pendants and pigment of a deep connection to each other across time, customs, language, and space.

Site Announcement
14-11-2023

Jornal de Leiria Article

Lapedo Valley
Portugal, Europe

Portuguese publication Jornal de Leiria has spotlighted Twelve Earths and its involvement with the Abrigo do Lagar Velho site. Read more here.

News
14-11-2023

Site 02 Announcement

Lapedo Valley
Portugal, Europe

Michael Jones McKean Studio, in deep cooperation with Fathomers in Los Angeles, excited to announce Abrigo do Lagar Velho as the second site in artist Michael Jones McKean’s long-form planetary sculpture Twelve Earths. This rock shelter, visited and occupied by humans for tens of thousands of years in the Lapedo Valley of Portugal’s District of Leiria, contains one of the most significant archaeological findings of the past century: the 29,000-year-old remains of a ceremoniously buried four-year-old child whose discovery helped change our perceptions of what it means to be human.

For full press release information: Português | English

For additional information, please contact:
[email protected]

Site Announcement
08-11-2023

Rhythms

Our perception of speed—fast, average, and slow—is innately relative and linked to one's body. But it is also linked to established codes and rhythms. For us, there exists an orthodoxy of cadence. Early on in Twelve Earths’ origin, there was the desire to create non-normative expectations around time, with an attention to how an artwork might develop a new approach to speed—moving slower.

The repercussions of this choice are manifold. At times Twelve Earths seems to disappear, especially on channels such as this one. But there is also the get-it-right conundrum of making things: wanting to put things into the world that feel considered. With this in mind, we have been working feverishly (fast, even!) on the announcement of our second site and the launch of our updated website. This process of attention and iteration has delayed our original launch date, with a new announcement date of November 14th now inching closer.

Process
25-09-2023

LSST 5 Lecture

Croatia
Balkans, Europe

Michael Jones McKean will be giving a talk in Poreč, Croatia for the LSST @ Europe5: "Towards LSST Science, Together” conference. Michael will be sharing his work and research as Artist-in-Residence at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory as it connects to Twelve Earths writ large.

News
06-09-2023

Site 02 Announcement Teaser Video

We made a short teaser using some ultra-rare Hi8 archival footage for Twelve Earths’ next site announcement.

Site Announcement
15-08-2023

Many Worlds Hypothesis

[ID: An slightly blurry and warped image of a skeleton on a rocky ground reflected vertically.

Beyond the narrow sliver afforded by our sensory perceptions of the world, the universe remains unknowable. Yet our ability to look up and out begs an eternal question: what else is out there? An answer for some, and a thought experiment for others, is posed in the quantum hypothesis of 'many worlds:'

The interpretation explains that our act of observation forces a quantum state to appear resolved, positing that there are additional worlds created for each and every quantum possibility as yet to be realized. So, as you read these words you maintain continuity along a central arc, but from this arc a cascading procession of perpetually forking paths emerges—tiny, minuscule variations creating complete and separate universes. A number of possibilities so vast as to seem infinite.

For a longer, trippier dose, take a spin into our research portal.

Research
12-06-2023

An Island

In the center, far off in the distance is the island, Little Rock, Palau. It is surrounded by light blue water and crystal clear sky.

In choosing the project’s twelve locations, so many factors were considered. Perhaps most fundamental was simply striving to connect together diverse expressions of Earth molding itself morphologically by way of terrains, landmasses, and ecologies. In this process of naming Twelves Earth’s ring path, an ‘island’ felt necessary. Here’s a taste of our research entry for 'an island:'

“An Island is landmass completely surrounded by water. The exact number of islands on Earth—ranging in size from Greenland to Palau’s Little Rock (pictured)—is unknown, though it numbers well into the millions. Of these millions, only about 11,000 islands are known to be inhabited by humans.”

Research
31-05-2023

Site Visits Update

Twelve Earths Ring
Globe

Even as Twelve Earths lives day-to-day as a conceptual scaffold to explore our relationship to Earth, it’s also deeply grounded in the world by way of its 12 physical, and very real locations. Over the last few years, encounters with these places (still only one announced publicly) have existed multivalently: from spirited and emergent relationships with people to speculative geo-poetic field work. Along the way there’s also, of course, documentation. Here’s a few meta shots at some of 12E’s locations—documenting the documentation.

Site Visit