Allora & Calzadilla, the Puerto Rican artist duo formed by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, are known for their thought-provoking, multi-media works that often interrogate the intersections of power, technology, and nature. Deadline (2007), created for Parkett magazine's 80th issue, is a poignant exploration of nature's power and human vulnerability. The work features a video of palm trees rocked by a violent storm, their swaying forms captured in an eerie, rhythmic motion. The title, Deadline, hints at the impending urgency of environmental crises, with the storm perhaps acting as a metaphor for ecological destabilisation. Captured on DVD, a technology now becoming obsolete, the medium further emphasises the tension of rapid technological change and the fragility of the natural world, encouraging reflection on the passage of time and the forces that shape our environment. Through Deadline and other works, Allora & Calzadilla continue to challenge viewers to reconsider their understanding of history, geopolitics, and nature, while engaging with pressing issues such as climate change and the politics of time.
In Parkett’s 80th issue, the artist duo spoke about the importance of materials and temporalities in their practice: “A material is never simply self-evident in its meaning; it is always marked with histories, cultures, and politics that are at once irreducible to and indissociable from the material in question. Any material is going to have the weight of history inscribed in it. The time of the world is there; geologically, geopolitically, there is always an allegorical dimension to materials. A tropical plant, for instance, cannot be treated as a bare biological life without effacing its colonial genealogy, even though we are quite interested in the actual temporalities and processes of the living organism as a sculptural problematic.”
