Through August 13, 2023
Goodman Gallery
Kanako Sasaki’s pixels morph silently, evoking absence and erasure, stimulating memory like an afterimage. To create this video, the artist used numerical data from simulation astronomer Eiichiro Kokubo of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Dr. Kokubo’s calculations imagine the formation of planets some 4.6 million years ago. Sasaki combined this material with digitized texts from Anne Frank’s diary, a record of her experience in hiding during Nazi occupation. Sasaki synchronized these two data pools by matching emotional points in the narrative with moments of planetary birth. In this way, she suggests that, like astronomical bodies whose light reaches us long after they have ceased to exist, human beings, though mortal, also persist.
Shown above: Kanako Sasaki (Japanese, b. 1976 ), Still from Illuminations (186 entries of Anne Frank’s diary in between the formation of terrestrial planets), 2012, video. Gift of Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz, 2019. (2019.29.6)
The Museum’s Video Art Series is made possible by the generosity of Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz.