THE WOODEN BEAVER ARCHIVE
(2022)
The Wooden Beaver, collaborative installation by Michael Borowski & Rachel Lin Weaver, Future Bodies, Moss Art Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA (2022)
Revelation, , AnalogueNOW Festival, Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Martin-Luther-Genezareth, Berlin, Germany (2022)
This series documents a parafictional mineral spring, The Wooden Beaver. I started this work after researching the history of mineral springs throughout Virginia and West Virginia. There seemed to be a historical lineage between the mineral spring and the urban bathhouse as a place of queer desire and public sex. Since there was no record of queer affairs at these sites, I began generating images with an AI text-to-image app on my phone. I printed these images using the salt print process. This was one of the most prevalent photographic processes during the mid-19th Century, when mineral spring sites were at the height of their popularity. The process renders bodies and structures as hazy, ambiguous mashups. The closer one looks at them the more their representational logic falls apart. Like a cruising glance or a search for queer history, they work best when done obliquely.
Ullrich, Wolfgang., “Kollege Computer: Wie die kunst kunstliche intelligennz als wekzeug entdeckt.” Art – das kunstmagazin. June 2023. Print.