Earthing Discharge

Group exhibition

04.09.2020–21.03.2021: Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), Cincinnati, US

Marjolijn Dijkman’s research-based approach employs scientific methods and imaging technologies to make visible underlying socio-political structures and their entanglements with various geographies and temporalities. Operating in the space between fact and fiction, abstraction and speculation, she creates films, performances, objects, and photographs that challenge the ideological and cultural hegemonies of Western science.

For her new commission in the CAC Lobby, Dijkman creates a custom collage comprised of photographs depicting obsolete ephemera associated with economies of energy—minerals, circuit boards, personal devices, and batteries. Arranged across a 40-foot wall, the photographs highlight the objects’ electrical fields. This effect, called corona discharge, caused by the ionization and electrical disturbance of adjacent air, is captured by Dijkman using a high voltage photography technique with conductive glass, sourced from smartphones.

CAC