Gretchen Bakke

I am interested in what people do when the systems they rely upon stop working. Whether speaking of the end of political systems like communism, infrastructural systems like the electric grid, economic systems like whaling, or cultural systems like the contemporary university what unites my work is an abiding concern for both the inventive creativity and the normative impulses that systemic collapse begets. What is the nature of renewal, I ask, and what do people, diversely, make of things when all that is solid fades unexpectedly into air.