My current book, Seven Years to Zero, is a set of brief essays, inventions, and essays that become inventions, about contemporary art. Some pieces examine work by artists such as Wolfgang Laib, Sarah Sze, and Mark Dion. Others engage in what I think of as speculative nonfiction-they begin with an actual work or scenario and then extrapolate. I’m hoping to build a slightly askew world in which art viewing and making is the access point to some of the ideas and experiences that will likely dominate this century: population pressure, species collapse, and the divide (or lack thereof) between human and animal, human and machine. How does art sculpt the imagination as we routinely feel for the edge of our species? How does it help create the minds required of the 21st century?
Essays from Seven Years to Zero have recently appeared in BOMB, AGNI, Boston Review (1, 2), PANK, The New England Review, Seneca Review (with interview), Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, Salt Hill Journal (nominated for a Pushcart Prize), diagram, Hotel Amerika, Everyday Genius, elimae, TriQuarterly, The Collagist (1, 2, interview), and Hobart.