Quake/Temblor is a response to encountering my civil engineer father’s diagnostic photographs of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake amidst family photographs. Quake/Temblor is about the intimate rapport between human and natural disaster. Please see:
picasaweb.google.com/susybielak/QuakeTemblorExhibition#

For this video, I applied a record of an 8.1 earthquake to a dining room. The video was staged at UCSD’s Caltrans Seismic Response Modification Device (SRMD) Test Facility, one of the world’s most powerful seismic shake tables. I applied the same pressure and motion normally used to test the integrity of structural systems (e.g. bridge bearings, scaled buildings) to domestic objects and situations. Working with a loose script, I staged a happening on the shake table during which people repeatedly reenacted life before, during, and after a quake. Working with structural engineers, the next day we applied a seismic record from the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, magnitude 8.1 on the Richter scale, to a living room/dining room set. In the resulting videos, people and domestic objects inhabit a massive, brute, mechanical system—leaving the quotidian disturbed and displaced.