On Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea

On an altered yet recognizable version of our neighboring planet, we find a world populated solely with two women. We do not learn their names nor how and when they came to Mars, but we observe their wanderings in a desolate landscape which they attempt make navigable and habitable with an amalgam of high-tech components retrofitted to found artifacts and monuments that appear to be the remnants of a long-gone civilization. The remains of massive stone listening devices are littered about the landscape, leading us to wonder: is this a colony that has collapsed and lost touch with earth? How did its occupants become stranded? Or are these the nocturnal imaginings of two post-apocalyptic survivors?

In a series of richly composited images, Kahn and Selesnick explore issues of ecological and societal collapse, and examine contemporary myths about technology, colonization and growth.

The project challenges our assumptions about the distinctions made between utopia and dystopia, Eden and apocalypse. The artists ask the question: what constitutes a sublime landscape in the twenty-first century?

Bellona

Journey to Erebus Mons

Janus/Symbiosis

Adrift on the Hourglass Sea

Cave

Cistern

Abandoned Oxygen Farm

Birth

Earthrise

Dust Storm

Elysium Planitia

Oracle

Canals

Floating Castle