Art, Installation, Light & Space

Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More is a collaborative installation by Vijay Rajkumar and Annie Simpson.

The installation’s title is drawn from Alexei Yurchak’s book of the same name, which details the sudden and long-gestating cultural changes that occurred in Soviet Russia during the final days of the once seemingly eternal period of the Soviet regime. The eternal perspective imposes on our contemporary condition in numerous, often invisible, yet prescient ways from the our dependency on fossil fuels and the structures of global capital, to Moore’s law, nationhood and pandemics (and life before). The designed environment provides a space to reflect on past and future moments of transformational change, when conditions that have always seemed to be forever are revealed to not always be so, and the necessary perspective shift that occurs when, as Yurchak proposes, the notion of eternity is viewed through a historical lens.

This iteration of Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More defamiliarizes a corridor with magenta light, a precisely tuned drone, and illusory, mirrored wall text designed by Vijay Rajkumar and features two videos by Annie Simpson. The footage depicts scrap efforts from the GOLDEN RAY, a cargo ship which capsized off of the Georgia Coast in 2019. It was declared a total loss, and salvage is (removal/ remediation/ containment) is ongoing.

Installed and exhibited at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia (Athens, GA, USA)