Never worked so hard, never felt so lucky to make a place we wish existed in the world. Here are our first shots of After the End, including the original score by old friend Stephen Baker. Now on view at Green-Wood Cemetery’s Historic Chapel through November 10, 2021.

Our next project is happening in this lovely chapel. As one of the first garden cemeteries in America, Green-Wood Cemetery was designed as a 478-acre respite for urban residents to commune with nature and restore perspective. After the End is a public installation dedicated to contemplating loss in all forms—the loss of loved ones, relationships, health, and worlds we once knew—as well as the practices that have helped us endure. More info.

After the End
Green-Wood Cemetery
Historic Chapel
Brooklyn, New York
September 15 – November 10, 2021

On June 2, we’ll be at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, to talk about our Light the Barricades installation and discuss ritual, attention, and public space with artist and theologian de’Angelo Dia. This discussion will be part of the opening celebration for W|ALLS: Defend, Divide, and the Divine. Food trucks, cash bar, DJ Fannie Mae, and complimentary museum admission.

We Were Distracted: A Conversation about Ritual, Attention, and Public Space
The Mint Museum
Charlotte, North Carolina
June 2, 2021
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Our large-scale public installation for contemplating inner obstructions continues at the Mint Museum with generous support from Charlotte Center City Partners. This public ritual offers space to consider our psychological challenges during the pandemic and beyond, and it is part of the exhibit WALLS: Defend, Divide, and the Divine. Reflect on your relationship with doubt at the illuminated wall and share your doubts, fears, struggles, and courage through a growing video installation of handwritten responses in the galleries.

Light the Barricades
The Mint Museum
Charlotte, North Carolina
February 24 – July 25, 2021
More information

“The greatest question of our time is whether men can bear to live without God…. I cannot believe, in the face of biology, in the eternity of the individual self; nor, in the face of history, can I believe in a personal anthropomorphic God. But unlike the tougher minds of my time I miss these encouragements, and cannot quite forget the poetry with which they surrounded my youth… What immortality means to me now is that we are all parts of a whole… the whole is made forever different by what we have done and been… Perhaps the greatest Whole, to which in all generations the greatest souls have devoted themselves, will, in tomorrow’s religion, be called God.” —Will Durant, 1932

Impressing other people is killing the true me… I judge others in terms of my own deficiencies… I fear my grandsons will not heal… My inclination toward oblivion… I worry we are losing our humanity… My pride that prevents me from changing… Accepting and letting go with equal measures of grace. These are just a few of the hundreds of handwritten reflections that have moved me and might offer consolation and courage to you too. They are in our limited edition Light the Barricades book, a meditation on the psychological barriers in our lives and a labor of love over the last year. Available at Ritual Fields.

The original score we recorded for our Light the Barricades installation is now available as part of an anthology of ambient music released by the label Mysteries of the Deep.

Korpo, Finland
January 16, 2020

We’ve spent the past month at Archipelago Artist Residency on the island of Korpo in the Baltic Sea. We developed the Light the Barricades book to everlasting dusks, the sun rising and setting in slow motion. Come watch a video installation of hundreds of handwritten refections and join us in considering the psychological barriers in our lives.

When the Annenberg Space for Photography invited us to create a public installation as part of their exhibit on the history of walls, we thought about walls both physically and psychologically. Walls that prevent us from connecting with others and ourselves. The wall as a site to contemplate difficult material and even atone. Inspired by many things, from the ancient I Ching to the speculative worlds of cyberpunk to the billboards that dominate our cities, we started sketching images of people gathering before an illuminated wall in the middle of the night. A year later, the installation opens September 5, 2019 across Los Angeles. More here.