The Event:
Petrified Lightning from Central Florida
(with Supplemental Didactics), 1997

Over 10,000 cast fulgarites in zircon, epoxy and sand; over 13,000 booklets. (Please note the gallery is showing a selection of this work)

"It's hard to imagine how memory and meaning could exist without language - both are always only available through some sort of representation. I imagine that objects having meaning - artworks, keepsakes, people, stones - could notexist for us without their "literature". How could a bolt of lightning, lasting only for the tiniest fraction of a second, be understood otherwise? Events this brief will always evade our synapses - and their existence will always only exist after the fact, amongst one's representations. Perhaps a true picture of how an artwork has meaning could be constructed if the literature supporting the artwork was put on display at the same time along with it. The Petrified Lightning project was created to explore this idea - an exhibition to enact the "event" as always already absent, with the residue and the meaning always already appearing in its place."

Allan McCollum Website

Allan McCollum and Matt Mullican