The Point of Final Collapse
The art collective Postcommodity presents The Point of Final Collapse, a sound installation and broadly conceptual work that focuses on the sinking Millennium Tower, responding to a scenario of capitalism contributing to the development of new conceptual frameworks of risk and accountability—as a building falls, its value rises. Postcommodity will engage the perspectives of a broad public by providing a call to prayer for relief from the economic stresses and dangers of a city in the throes of radical social, cultural, architectural, and economic transformation.
The installation uses computational algorithms that parse data representing the movement of the Tower. This movement data is then mapped to healing ASMR audio and soothing binaural beats, transforming the sonification of the sinking and tilting of the Millennium Tower into therapeutic sounds designed to encourage relaxation by extending the power of the city’s scenic beauty. Long Range Acoustic Devices, installed in the tower at San Francisco Art Institute’s (SFAI) historic Chestnut Street Campus, will subtly broadcast this indeterminate and generative multichannel sound composition to North Beach and downtown San Francisco for a 4-minute duration each day at 5pm. The Point of Final Collapse renders legible the logics of technocracy and capitalism, which encode fear, desire, and the inability for the greater public to rationalize and control systems of power.
About the artists
Postcommodity is an indigenous art collective composed of SFAI Art + Technology Chair Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist. Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared indigenous lens and voice to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st Century through ever increasing velocities and complex forms of violence. Postcommodity works to forge new metaphors capable of rationalizing our shared experiences within this increasingly challenging contemporary environment; promote a constructive discourse that challenges the social, political and economic processes that are destabilizing communities and geographies; and connect indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with the broader public sphere.
The collective has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: 18th Biennale of Sydney in Sydney, AUS; 2017 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; documenta14, Athens, GR and Kassel, DE; and their historic land art installation at the US/Mexico border near Douglas, AZ and Agua Prieta, SON.
Acknowledgements
Postcommodity is the recipient of the 2019 Harker Award for Interdisciplinary Studies, that supports artists-in-residence at SFAI. The Harker Award was established through a generous bequest by artist and SFAI faculty member Ann Chamberlain and is administered by the San Francisco Foundation. Past residents include Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Katrin Sigurdardóttir, and Michael Jones McKean.
SFAI’s exhibitions and public programs are made possible by the generosity of donors and sponsors, including the Harker Fund of The San Francisco Foundation, Institute of Museums and Library Services, Grants for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Work Fund, Koret Foundation, Pirkle Jones Fund, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, and Fort Point Beer Company. Ongoing support is provided by the McBean Distinguished Lecture and Residency Fund, The Buck Fund, and the Visiting Artist Fund of the SFAI Endowment.
