Janet Biggs, 2025
Three-channel HD video with spatial sound
Running time 10:16

Biggs’ immersive multi-channel video installation of sights and sounds takes the viewer deep into the Amazonian rainforest, full of strangler figs and howler monkeys struggling for survival. Imagery follows the path of a total solar eclipse that occurred in 1858, one hundred years before Biggs was conceived. The installation’s videos conclude in a cloud forest, where expectations are inverted and otherworldly connections made possible.

The work originates in Biggs’ memories of her mother’s struggles with Sundowning Syndrome, a symptom of dementia that interferes with the ability to distinguish day for night. After her mother’s death, Biggs began a four year journey, placing herself in multiple paths of totality as she sought to reconnect with her mother. The path of totality has been described as a time when the entire biome reverses day for night.
During her research, Biggs came upon a document titled An Account of the Total Eclipse of the Sun by Lt J.M. Gillis, published by the Smithsonian in 1859. Gillis’ account of the eclipse, particularly indigenous people’s perspectives, compelled Biggs to travel to the Amazon to film the 1858 eclipse’s path.

With support from National Geographic/Lindblad, Biggs embarked on a journey that conflates time and reimagines what is possible while balancing within the precarious relationship of humans to the natural world and individuals to each other.

Eclipse (Amazon, September 7, 1858) is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature through the Media Arts Assistance Fund a regrant partnership of NYSCA and Wave Farm.