Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik & Coco Klockner: 536 VE.

When it’s all too much 

(frequently) 

and I can’t quite grasp 

the changing landscape 

I imagine slipping into a nice warm sleep 

and waking up years down the road 

to learn how it all works out. 

Though usually against their will,

the” long sleep” is a common fantasy trope.

From the pincushion Sleeping Beauty 

to the royalist Rip Van Winkle 

to the utopian Julian West. 

 

But does it have to be a fantasy? 

In a way, it’s a reality for those poor souls 

who stumbled into peat bogs over the centuries 

only to be exhumed 

in a state of suspended animation. 

Sure they’re dead, 

but they’re also so enviably preserved 

that we can know the last flower they sniffed 

from the specks of pollen in their sinuses. 

Skin leather tanned by the muskeg 

to a soft waxed bronze, 

these figures tell us many things 

about our clumsiest ancestors 

without having to say a word. 

 

It’s not inconceivable 

that folks could take to these bog baths 

from time to time 

just to escape when things get really bad, 

hoping they’d come out the other side 

refreshed and with a renewed curiosity. 

How long to lay down for? 

A few dreary work days? 

An 18 month pandemic? 

Fourteen hundred and eighty five years?

Sure. 

 

The year 536 was a bad one. 

I’m not here to place blame, 

but a volcano 

in either El Salvador or Iceland 

(or both) 

threw up such a ruckus that it snowed in China 

in the summer. 

Crops failed everywhere that crops were grown. 

Procopius said 

"For the sun gave forth its light without brightness,

 like the moon, during the whole year," 

because that’s how they talked back then. 

The Byzantines were on the cusp 

of reconquering Western Europe 

with Belisarius entering Rome

but within a few years 

half of them were gone due to plague, 

having been weakened by the year without sun. 

 

What would our Bog folks think 

if they skipped the “dark ages” 

and all that followed, 

waking up now? 

What would they make of us 

and our ability to accidentally shift the seasons, 

blotting out the sun with soot and smoke? 

Or to think of it another way, 

how would it all be different 

if they hadn’t taken that nap in the first place?

If the people who are the most overwhelmed, 

the least accounted for, 

the least empowered,

were able to stay with us 

and contribute to the course of it all. 

Is there an alternative history or archeology of that? 

 

Coco Klockner and Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik are thinking about these and other things.  Sculptures and video form the basis of their show 536 VE., while hinting at each object being a

speculative artifact at the same time. Good friends, the artists worked independently (with hints, nudges, and conversations along the way) to create the exhibition. 

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