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SAIC CLASS OF 2020 GRADUATE WEBSITE
The Future of Our Plans: SAIC Graduate Class of 2020
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The Future of Our Plans: SAIC Graduate Class of 2020

Hannah Hirsekorn


Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Fiber and Material Studies
hannahhirsekorn@gmail.com
hannah-hirsekorn.squarespace.com
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Hannah Hirsekorn - The Last Spike
The Last Spike, 2020, Reclaimed contaminated metal, foraged ochres, mugwort, iron ore, and bronze

An artist book about the creation of The Last Spike installation by Hannah Hirsekorn.

These railroad spikes are made of reclaimed metal that the hyper-accumulator plant, mugwort, remediated from the soil of the Union Pacific rail yards of Chicago, IL. The artist collected mugwort plants (a weed that pulls heavy metals out of the soil), smelted the plant matter, reclaimed the remediated metal and recast that metal into railroad spikes as a visual representation of mugwort’s remediation work. Closing an extraction loop in collaboration with the plants, she aims to visually represent the intertwined histories of plants and humans. The Last Spike represents both the Golden Spike of the Anthropocene, a marker of a new geological epoch and the first human impacted sedimentary rock layer, (arguably a result of the invention of the steam engine) and the ceremonial Golden Spike that connected the two railroad lines that completed the transcontinental railroad across America.

Hannah Hirsekorn - The Last Spike
The Last Spike, Mugwort detail, 2020, Reclaimed contaminated metal, foraged ochres, mugwort, iron ore, and bronze
Hannah Hirsekorn - The Last Spike
The Last Spike, Detail, 2020, Reclaimed contaminated metal, foraged ochres, mugwort, iron ore, and bronze

Hannah Hirsekorn is an interspecies social practice artist based in Chicago. Her work disrupts the narrative that humans are the driving force of the ecosystem and demonstrates that humans are only one element in a complex system. She explores more nuanced possibilities for the future of ecology through an intersectional and egalitarian set of values. Her work utilizes inconvenience through collective making and material consciousness as a radical act. Pointing to the possibility of moral bonds as a currency and deconstructing standardized market values of material and labor, her work cherishes knowledge, humility, reuse and empowerment through making.





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