The Red Earth Project (2019-)

Introduction
  1. Overview    
  2. Research
  3. A Lecture at Princeton

The Books
  1. About
  2. Red Earth in the Paris Review
  3. Themes
  4. Form
  5. Where to buy
  6. What Lies Beyond the Red Earth?

Sales

Process and Output
  1. Conceptual Development
  2. Photography
  3. Prose
  4. Computational and Subjective Translation
  5. Digital to Physical
  6. Process 1: Process and Theory
  7. Process 2: Making
  8. Compositions

Selected Works
  1. Red Earth, The Book
  2. Ever Abeokuta
  3. Colonial Enterprise
  4. Red Earth
  5. Amor Fati
  6. Direct Translation Diptychs 1, 2, 3 & 4
  7. Sixteenth Century Technology
  8. How Can Time Become a Circle
  9. Deference
  10. Solitary Breath

Exhibitions & Performances
  1. Studio Hanniball
  2. Archive of Forgetfulness
  3. Listening to the Red Earth, a film

Community
   1. The Red Earth Playlist
   2. Beyond the Zero Podcast
   3. EDIT Magazin

Related Works
  1. Planetary Portals
  2. Losing is Ours

Next Steps

Object Int’l —
Info
  1. The Red Earth Project is an ongoing artistic, interdisciplinary study centred on prose reflections and machine translation, drawing attention to the precarious status of non-western cultural heritage, knowledge systems and practices in the increasingly dominant Western systems of data, virtual architectures and AI technologies. A critical study of machine learning (AI), this research asks how alternative cosmologies can be better represented within virtual architectures powered by probabalistic computation. 

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Losing is Ours: The Prologue, a modern take on the epic poem, is an introduction to a forthcoming feature-length film meditation. This Dante-inspired work reflects on the intricacies of modern life, from the intimate to the planetary, as we do or do not relate to the different material compositions of our world. Taking the point of view of a low-frequency radio wave, we journey through materials, time zones and atmospheres as a quiet observer, folding time, contemplating the human species, flora, fauna and geology across history, both recorded and forgotten, poignantly resisting societal cynicism, and instead conjuring and celebrating the poetic imagination.

This work is a collaboration between Lee Tesche, a Florida-based artist and musician renowned for his work with the band Algiers, and Berlin-based British Nigerian writer and artist Michael Salu. Salu's book Red Earth, which this film is intricately related to, was published by Calamari Archive in 2023.