Broken Symmetry (How to Find North) is an installation and video essay.

The featured video explores the poetics of magnetism, polarity, and navigation of local and global fields of power, where North is both an abstract idea and a shifting geologic orientation. Narration by Jazmyn Crosby; sound design and additional camera by Daniel Crouch.

Installed, the video is presented alongside three steel alters, each supporting one or more glasses of contaminated water. In each glass is a temporarily magnetized bit of metal (a sewing needle; a safety pin; a picture nail) acts as a compass needle, pointing toward magnetic north. These needles are re-magnetized once per day, a gesture echoed and unpacked by the narration of the accompanying short film Broken Symmetry.

The alters are counterbalanced by quilted sandbags featuring prints of Caspar David Friedrich’s The Sea of Ice and Frederic Edwin Church’s Study for the Icebergs, locating in the defensive function of the sandbag an analogy for the false comfort found in monumental images of a rapidly changing landscape.

Materials present:

Video projection, steel frames; sandbags quilted from satin, landscaping fabric, and dye transfer prints; bioconcrete shelves and stones from ground eggshell, iron filings, and gelatin; temporary compass needles; floor treatment and vessels from exhausted dyes, dye precipitates, and iron oxide liquor.  Installation dimensions variable; structures are approximately 30 x 30 x 10″ or smaller.