Film & Video (Film & Video)

Taking its title from the eponymous mythological creature—famously featured as sea nymphs in Homer’s Odyssey. Sirens exist in literature across many cultures including Ancient Greece and India, described as part bird and part woman, or like a mermaid. They were said to charm men by their song, and, having first lulled them to sleep, tear them to pieces.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Oil Bell

Installation (Installation)

Sound of Ice Melting is based on the ancient Zen Buddhist koan about the sound of one hand clapping. Here, Kos has surrounded two twenty-five-pound blocks of ice with eight microphones that call to mind the political press conferences prevalent during the Vietnam War era when this piece was created. Zen practice values such absurdity as a way to transcend the limitations of ordinary discourse and rational thought—empirical processes at the root of all political conflicts.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Parked on the shoulder of a single lane highway running through a desert landscape, Marlene looks over her shoulder from inside the car at a fierce storm looming over a distant horizon. Turning her head toward and away from the scene she says, “When I look for the lightning it never strikes, but when I look away it does.” And indeed, the lightning does seem to strike only when she turns away. Before filming Lightning , Paul Kos had done a fair amount of research on lightning, much of it conducted at the lightning research lab at the University of Colorado.