
Janet Biggs
Space Between Fragility Curves, 2018

The video combines footage of scientists on a simulated mission at the Mars Desert Research Society …

In film, photography, and performance, Janet Biggs orchestrates and captures extreme acts of physical endurance, risk, or expertise: motorcycles speeding across salt flats, horses galloping on treadmills, or kayaks moving in synchrony through arctic waters, as in Fade to White, 2010. By capturing these events on film, Biggs herself does something extraordinary; it has been said that her subjects are “as difficult to film as they are to perform.”


The video combines footage of scientists on a simulated mission at the Mars Desert Research Society in Utah with that of Yemeni refugee children from Camp Markazi in Obock, Djibouti. It is set to a score created by Shimon, a robot engineered at Georgia Tech to write and play music on the marimba using AI.

In film, photography, and performance, Janet Biggs orchestrates and captures extreme acts of physical endurance, risk, or expertise: motorcycles speeding across salt flats, horses galloping on treadmills, or kayaks moving in synchrony through arctic waters, as in Fade to White, 2010. By capturing these events on film, Biggs herself does something extraordinary; it has been said that her subjects are “as difficult to film as they are to perform.”