to paradise / all your names in one
to paradise / all your names in one - installation view (photography, here and below by Kyle S. Dunne)
to paradise / all your names in one - installation view (photography, here and below by Kyle S. Dunne)
to paradise / all your names in one, made in collaboration with Judd Morrissey, is a site-specific installation created at SAIC Galleries in Chicago, IL, as part of SAIC’s 2025 Faculty Sabbatical Triennial. It is the installation component of a larger project that includes a mixed reality performance, The Zone of Pure Doubt, and the public release of a double-single under the artists’ pop-art moniker, Nobo’s Muse.
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to paradise / all your names in one brings together poetry, photography, large-scale 3D lidar imaging, and original music. Developed during and after Judd’s sabbatical and during my gender transition, to paradise / all your names in one traces an intimate psychogeographical navigation of uncertainty, rest, and profound metamorphosis. The installation draws parallels between the volcanic cycles of eruption, formation, and erosion in Hawai‘i and the transformation of queer and trans bodies—and bodies of work—over time. A 9×30’ high-resolution panorama derived from lidar scans of the Hawaiian rainforest wraps the gallery, situating viewers inside a data-driven yet sensorial landscape. Within this environment, two turntables alternate between original songs and ambient birdsong, creating a shifting rhythm of presence and absence.
to paradise / all your names in one - installation view (photography, here and below by Kyle S. Dunne)
Released under the artists’ art-pop alter ego Nobo’s Muse, the accompanying double single shares the installation’s title and anchors the work sonically. The gallery also includes a gatefold record jacket featuring original photography, lyrics, and a collaboratively written poem rendered both in print and as white vinyl text unfurling across the floor in the shape of the international dateline—an unstable line that becomes both geographic marker and metaphor for transition, a reference to “The Zone of Pure Doubt,” a disputed region of the Pacific and part of Judd’s sabbatical research where the correct timing of the Jewish sabbath cannot be agreed upon using any of the traditional rules of global timekeeping—an uncertainty amplified by the slippage between halakhic and international datelines. (You can read Judd’s sabbatical reflection here.)
Blurring boundaries between art and life, documentation and performance, to paradise / all your names in one marks a pivotal moment in Avnisan and Morrissey’s decade-long collaboration, bringing their shared practice into a new register of musical, spatial, and emotional intimacy.