Cryptocrystalline
4-year senior postdoctoral artistic research project funded by FWF Austrian Science Fund

Caitlin Berrigan has been awarded an Elise Richter PEEK four-year senior postdoctoral fellowship in artistic research funded by the FWF – Austrian Science Fund, and housed in the Academy of Fine Arts Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies (March 2023 – February 2027)

Cryptocrystalline is a multi-year project to give long-term, observational attention to the subterranean and the geological within an overlooked geography at the core of shifting strategies of power and technogovernance: the dispossessed deserts in the Great Basin. It is an active volcanic region extending from Southern Idaho to Nevada and eastern California. A vast, geologically formed desert with the largest and most ancient artesian water reservoirs on the continent, the Great Basin has been home to humans for over 20,000 years. It has been ravaged by settler colonialism, with the Gold Rush in the 1850’s followed by contaminating tests in nuclear weapons development, drone control centers for war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more recently, rare earth mining, artistic earthworks, and experiments in corporate sovereignty.

My project focuses on these legacies of and resistances to toxic colonialism in the Great Basin, and the staging grounds for extraterrestrial ambitions that aim to sustain data capitalism and post-petroleum economies. Through multiple extended site visits and interviews, I will produce experimental documentaries, writings, and extended visual materials that focus on the geological interconnections of selected sites: the expansion of Silicon Valley’s infrastructures and land claims from Mountain View across I-80 into the rolling desert hills of Sparks, NV; lithium mining claims surrounding the Paiute people’s Kooyooe Pa’a (Pyramid Lake); queer gentrification and hot springs culture in the desert; and monitoring the active volcano that lies beneath the Idaho National Laboratory, the first nuclear reactor in the U.S.