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The Magic Hour No. 3 will open on Saturday, September 29, 2018 at 2:30pm - sunset, and run thru December 2, 2018.

Read a selection of texts from the Tick Memorial Library.

The Magic Hour

“We ask a simple question: Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject?” — Jakob von Uexküll.

The Magic Hour No.3 takes the form of a temporary outdoor library and reading room that follows the bibliography of a small tick.

The story goes like this: the tick, using only its sense of touch and temperature, climbs to the end of a branch and perches there indefinitely, waiting for a warm-blooded animal to pass. Only when the tick registers the smell of a mammal’s skin does it jolt awake and fall from its branch, hoping to land directly onto a dog (or a human leg) as it is running past. If it is successful, the tick finds the mammal’s skin, sucks its blood, and then falls to the ground to lay its eggs and die. This discrete perceptual system makes up the tick’s umwelt (environment, or ‘surround world’) – the elements that the tick perceives to have meaning in its world. The power of this perceptual system is such that the tick has been observed to wait up to eighteen years to register the correct biochemical trigger (butyric acid) and fall to eat its first and final meal.

The story of the tick, first told by the biologist Jakob von Uexküll in his 1934 text A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, is a key illustration in Uexküll’s theory of biosemiotics. Since then it has found its way into a wide range of philosophical reflections on the fundamental concept of the environment, from Heidegger’s phenomenology to Canguilhem’s epistemology of science.

‘The Tick Memorial Library’ will bring together a cross-section of texts that draw on Uexküll’s origin story of modern environmental thought, creating a kind of temporary monument, as well as an index of the tick theory.

 

Julia Tcharfas is an artist and curator based in los Angeles. Her research draws on materials from modern scientific and technological folklore and often engages with design and performance of artificial natures. A profile about her practice is featured in the Swiss Institute’s ‘SI: Visions’ video series. Tcharfas is the founder of Before Present in Los Angeles and has recently exhibited work in Project 1049, Luma Foundation, Gstaad; Transformation Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, London; and Fluent Gallery, Santander.

Tim Ivison is an interdisciplinary scholar working on the political ecology of modern cities and urban planning. He teaches in both Liberal Arts and History + Theory at SCI-Arc and in the department of Humanities and Sciences at Art Center College of Design. Recent collaborations with the artist Julia Tcharfas include T.E.O.T.W.A.W.K.I. and Operations Theater at Before Present, Los Angeles. 

 

The structure is open to the public from sunrise to sunset 7 days a week.

For directions to The Magic Hour, please contact the.magic.hr@gmail.com.