New Zealand

Post hoc. Myriad disappearances are at the heart of the project. A vast inventory of vanished or invisible phenomena, extinctions, and past events are broadcast from the Palazzina Canonica on the Riva dei Sette Martiri, the New Zealand Pavilion. Millions of defunct things are enunciated by an automated voice and electronically broadcast continuously from a tapered, echo-free chamber via commercially produced tree cell towers located across Venice. These barely camouflaged, ersatz trees are nodes in a communication network that signal to the listeners entities that no longer exist – almost like the trees that the cell towers replicate. The scale of loss is visible in the empty Palazzina library where the lists are printed in sync with the broadcasts. The Latin phrase post hoc means ‘after this’. Dane Mitchell’s Post hoc troubles ideas of truth and agency, leaving open questions regarding how we recognise and consider the past in the present and its meaning for the future.