Eureka! collapses the timeline between two mining practices central to California’s wealth: the gold rush and data mining. It comes from a recognition that both mining practices are motivated by greed and scaffolded by unprecedented power. Operating in the lawless West, miners illegitimately claim land and humanity as raw resources.

In this show, I present an archive, material remnants from these two extraction processes: a printout of my Google data and foraged pigments from the most productive hydraulic gold mine in California. An accompanying artist book, Erosion, warns against the dangers of surveillance capitalism, calling for privacy and self determination, “we are the stewards  of our lived experience. collaboratively, we determine the landscape of our future.” 

This is my MFA thesis work, installed in December 2020 in a warehouse outside of Portland, OR.