Albedo
Wood, White Roofing Granules, Modified Humidifier Carbon Capture Units, Door Bells, Carboncure Concrete, Tinted Plexiglass, Radiant Barrier Insulation, Sorbent, Soil from the city of Chicago, Grass Seed, Artificial Grass.
During Chicagos deadly heat wave of 1995, more than 700 people perished over a five-day period that saw triple-digit temperatures. Many were poor, elderly residents sequestered without air conditioning behind locked doors.
The bodies of 41 victims were never claimed. Albedo acts as a generative memorial to memorialize them.
This sculptural installation demarcates the 41 coffins of the unclaimed victims who were buried in an unmarked grave at a near suburb of Chicago. These wooden structures are coated with white roofing granules transforming caskets into a heat and light reflecting cabinet of both mitigation measures and speculative possibilities for reducing the severity of and adapting to our changing climate. One notable gesture includes the artists take on a sustainable experimental carbon capture unit that was recently created at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, using hacked humidifiers to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. To complete this speculative system Bolen has created concrete replicas using CarbonCure concrete, a material which embeds captured carbon permanently.