From The Signal to Sanctuary, These Creators Explore Outer, Inner, and Liminal Space
WHEN NASA SENT THE GOLDEN RECORD, a gold-plated disk representing the human race, into interstellar space on the Voyager spacecraft, some sounds and images were bound to end up on NASA’s cutting room floor. One of those redacted pieces will be here at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and discussed at length this Sunday, December 8th, with author Emily Rapp Black joining visual artist Dario Robleto in the Mary Craig Auditorium.
“Are we alone? Does love survive the death of cells? What do we owe to the memories of one another’s hearts?” These are the kinds of questions Robleto’s art asks. A multidisciplinary artist, researcher, materialist poet, and self-proclaimed citizen-scientist, Robleto is bringing to fruition an ambitious trilogy of films that serve as recordings about…recordings. How the human race has chosen to remember itself, or be seen by others, or be reflected in history — which is another kind of recording.
An incredibly layered work of art, The Signal, an exhibit at the SBMA that opens December 8th and runs through May 25th, 2025, places 3D art alongside drawings on paper, as context around the centerpiece: Ancient Beacons Long for Notice, an immersive, 70-minute movie based on a rare and forgotten document—the first audio recording of warfare made in 1918.
This recording was considered for inclusion on NASA’s Golden Record, but ultimately rejected. That it was in the running, and then omitted from the final record sent into space, inspires so many questions about memory, how we wish to be seen, and what constitutes an honest and frank reflection of ourselves. These are questions that reverberate throughout Robleto’s work.
At the heart of his art is a melancholia and an aching meditation on love and memory — territories and spaces writer Emily Rapp Black is deeply familiar with. A survivor of loss, from the intimately physical to losing her dearest beloved, Black understands the devastating power and elasticity of memory. Similar to Robleto, she has explored these familiar and alien liminal spaces in her work as a writer.
The Still Point of the Turning World, and Sanctuary: a Memoir, are a pair of books that follow the diagnosis of her son Ronan with a rare and fatal disease that would take him from her. The journey she chronicles, from the depths of grief to finding resiliency, reveal a gifted storyteller able to articulate yearning. Once a student at a divinity school, she has the necessary lens to observe pain and loss and give it a voice.
“Studying belief systems is a way of studying the heart,” Black said, “and all writing seeks to find meaning and traction there — sometimes that is intellectual, but the books that move us most are those that make us feel embodied and human, which itself requires a kind of belief in the innate goodness of people and the world.”
Both artists are finding ways to illuminate these mysteries. “Just as Dario’s work is incredibly tactile and vital-seeming, particularly because he uses many modalities to express the connection between memory, empathy, and time — or how love stretches and shrinks time, and vice versa — stories, too, are living documents,” Black said, when asked about how their work overlaps. “Just as a viewer brings their own unique experiences and losses and joys to the visual experience, the reader brings those elements to the page to interact with what the writer has created, which is a kind of shrine created by story, but not one that is fixed or dogmatic.”
Parallel Stories, an SBMA series that pairs the written word with visual media, has found a potent combination with Robleto and Black. For Black, a robust curiosity and compassion, and an engagement with mystery, are ‘salvific and transcendent.’
“That sense of ‘not knowing but grappling with trying to know’ is a key theme for both of us,” Black continued. “And this: love and empires fall, art somehow remains. I get that sense from his work, and I believe it to be true about all art — that it’s one great conversation across time and history.”
