Come Into View, 2025
Glass, Mixed Media, Digital Video 8:37, Kristen Neville Taylor (director, producer), Rich Hoffmann (video, editing), Frances Beaver (original music)
Since the Paleozoic era, horseshoe crabs have synchronized breeding with the lunar cycle each spring, climbing ashore when the tide is high, the moon is full, and the water is warm to mate and lay their eggs in the sand. Phenology, or the study of the timing of cyclical natural events with the seasons, was once a predictable field that is now increasingly less so in accordance with climate shifts. Before the invention of industrialized time and its prevalence, humans also organized their lives by the seasons, following the rotation of the sun and moon, and according to cycles of birth, life, and death.
Today, seas are rising in New Jersey two times faster than on average, yet our hearts and minds are slow to catch up with the shifting tide. Come into View is a multimedia installation that incorporates materials and stories collected from field visits to the Delaware Bay made possible by a web of conservationists, scientists, and volunteers that have been quietly laying the groundwork for an alternative value system in Southern New Jersey. Through a video portrait, glass breath forms, and text, the exhibition explores the ways that horseshoe crabs model collective resilience and other ways of being in time.
Many thanks to Francis Beaver, Rich Hoffmann, Paulette Hartman, Amanda Crain-Freeland, the Littoral Society, the Wetlands Institute, Ron Smith and his students at Haddonfield High School, Theo Diehl, Jenny Garcia, Andrew S. Lewis, Wheaton Arts & Cultural Center, Tyler Glass Department, and the horseshoe crabs.
This project was made possible by a grant from NOAA, DEP, NJ Council for the Arts, and New Jersey Coastal Resilience and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.