Grosse Fatigue.

Drawing on the Smithsonian Institute’s collection of scientific objects and the vast scope of the Internet, Camille Henrot uses the familiar setting of a computer desktop to narrate the origins of the universe. Set to a spoken-word poem, written in collaboration with the poet Jacob Bromberg, that draws from scientific theories, religious creation stories, and oral traditions, Grosse Fatigue features a rapid-fire choreography of pop-up windows with images drawn from a potentially limitless field of references. The swiftly proliferating imagery signals both the speed and lightness of the digital world and, conversely, the exhaustion provoked by an overwhelming stream of data. Henrot has explained that the work attempts to confront “the desire to universalize knowledge [that] is accompanied by the conscience I have of this act. As soon as you think you have laid out and circumscribed the entirety of your universe within a single, selfsame landscape, isn’t the only question of any worth, and which relentlessly nags and torments the mind, ‘But what is there beyond the limit?’”