The Long Now Foundation is presenting interdisciplinary artist Alicia Eggert’s This Present Moment, with an opening party on Friday November 4, 02022 for the sign's exhibition in partnership with Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. Centered around Eggert's neon sculpture This Present Moment, the exhibition provides a space where the passage of time is brought to the foreground, illuminated brilliantly through the words of Stewart Brand.
Alicia Eggert's work gives material form to language and time, powerful but invisible forces that shape our perception of reality. Her creative practice is motivated by an existential pursuit to understand the linear and finite nature of human life within a seemingly infinite universe. Her inspiration is drawn from physics and philosophy, and her sculptures often co-opt the styles and structures of commercial signage to communicate messages that inspire reflection and wonder. Long Now's Ahmed Kabil writes that Eggert's work makes contemplating empathy on grand temporal scales "feel as intuitive as looking at a clock to check the time."
In conjunction with the exhibition, Alicia Eggert will be giving a Long Now Talk at The Interval on Thursday November 3, 02022 at 7:00pm which will be livestreamed on our YouTube channel. There will be a limited number of in-person tickets for sale.
The opening party for the exhibition on November 4, 02022 will start with a Long Now Member preview at 5pm (Members RSVP here) and will feature remarks from the artist and a reception. The public is invited to join the opening from 7pm on.
Following the opening party, the sign will be on public exhibit in Building B at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco from November 02022 through February 02023. The exhibition will feature large lenticular prints of Eggert’s work, a behind the scenes video of the sign's journey up to the bristlecones on Long Now’s property in Nevada, and the sign itself, sculpted steel and neon illuminating a quote from Stewart Brand’s book The Clock of the Long Now:
THIS PRESENT
MOMENT
USED TO BE
THE UNIMAGINABLE
FUTURE
Eggert’s work uses neon, steel, and time to expand the scope and possibilities of the carefully chosen quotes she uses in her work. In This Present Moment, Brand’s quote moves from its original form to Eggert’s subtly edited version:
THIS
MOMENT
USED TO BE
THE
FUTURE
And then blinks into nothingness before returning once more to the start of the cycle, bringing a deeper awareness of time and place to the viewer through the simple flickering of the neon sign.
Placed briefly amongst ancient bristlecone pines in the mountains of eastern Nevada, this image of the sign serves as a provocation towards long-term thinking. In the words of Long Now Research Fellow Jonathon Keats, the juxtaposition of ancient landscape and neon sign "establishes a literal relationship between the present moment and the long term, and physically models the essential simultaneity of multiple time scales."
This Present Moment has previously been exhibited in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, where it lends its title (and Stewart’s words) to This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World, an exhibition running from May 13, 02022 to April 2, 02023.
Eggert's artworks have been installed on building rooftops in Russia, on bridges in Amsterdam, and on uninhabited islands in Maine, beckoning us to ponder our place in the world and the role we play in it. Eggert is an Associate Professor of Studio Art and the Sculpture Program Coordinator at the University of North Texas.
Long Now’s exhibition of This Present Moment will run through February 02023. We hope that you can visit Fort Mason Center and contemplate the Big Here and the Long Now through Alicia Eggert’s work.
