This is a film created for the show “Reflections” at Atlanta Contemporary’s Chute Space; a former storage room for coal.

On the short Super8 film, Longevity Was Not a Priority in The Autonomous Region of Light, we encounter a still life with a burning candle in front of a poster depicting wild horses. Such props are evocative of Americana and the exhibition space’s past use as not only a coal chute but also a place for fixing horse carriages. Connecting the depletion of our natural resources and the periled status of the coal mining industry, this work conjures vanitas, a genre of still life that centers on perishable goods and symbolizes human greed as well as the fleeting character of human life. Playing on notions of ephemerality, the grainy quality of the video casts a moment in the present as one that belongs to the past.