Janet Echelman: Remembering the Future

Résumé du livre

Janet Echelman: Remembering the Future documents the process behind the artist's monumental installation for the MIT Museum, created from braided, knotted, and hand-spliced colored engineered fiber. Suspended over the grand entry staircase, the work welcomes visitors into a space where material experimentation, scientific inquiry, and art historical reflection converge, transforming climate research into a poetic, material expression of planetary change. Developed during Echelman's tenure as the 2022-2024 MIT CAST Distinguished Visiting Artist, the artwork grew from an intensive research and development process in collaboration with architect, engineer, and MIT Associate Professor Caitlin Mueller and computational designer and MIT PhD studentAdam Burke. The project draws inspiration from climate research by Professor Raffaele Ferrari of the MIT Lorenz Center, whose scientific models-including the En-ROADS simulator-were a point of departure for the artist in creating the sculpture's form. An essay by MIT Professor Caroline A. Jones situates the installation within broader art historical conversations about feminist fiber art, softness, and the environmental imagination. Produced through a collaborative partnership between the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and the MIT Museum, the companion publication to Remembering the Future documents the multi-year journey that shaped this site-specific installation-an exploration of how rigorous research, cross-disciplinary dialogue, and artistic experimentation can yield expressive forms that invite us to reflect on the climate narratives that shape our collective future.