For the exhibition A Glimmer Exodus Sketchbook, Michael Trigilio weaves together over a dozen works in various media exploring speculative realizations of intergalactic travel, planetary exodus, and themes of resistance and revolution. Since 2017, Trigilio has been developing a long-form narrative project based on his serialized science-fiction novel, Glimmer: Verse One of the Blockchain Elegy. The works in this exhibition are polished “sketches” that illuminate the sounds, landscapes, vessels, and visualizations born in the world of the novel. Also included in the exhibition is his 2017 short film 12 Transmissions from the Occupied States Orbiting the Sun, an animated work that forges a central conceptual link to the themes of political rage and uprising found throughout the exhibition. Trigilio uses the word “sketches” in this exhibit as a conceptual device to frame the breadth of the works as a collection. Bringing these works together as part of a multi-nodal “sketchbook” is meant to underscore the personal, handmade production of the work, thereby exploring how sci-fi images can be approached by an audience as merely the sketching of an artist as opposed to the reductive outcomes found in blockbuster cinema. This handmade, DIY approach correlates formally and conceptually to the impulse found in punk and hip-hop to make the culture we want to live in. Permission is an illusion and resisting power is proactive not purchased. The Glimmer of this sketchbook are a loosely-knit cohort of visionaries, radicals, and creators. They have leveraged their gifts and their work to connect with a cosmic intelligence, enabling their organization and departure from Earth, vowing to make a new world. Like this sketchbook itself, the work of the Glimmer is a process of trial and error: mistakes are made, the future is built, and transcendence is possible. Michael Trigilio is a multimedia artist living in San Diego whose work is inspired by material that balances sarcasm and prayer, giving rise to works that examine religion, humor, narcissism, and science-fiction. His works in film, sound, performance, and tactical-media have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, and Anthology Film Archives in New York among many others. Michael’s collaborative public-media project Neighborhood Public Radio was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and in residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. In 2013, he developed Project Planetaria with astrophysicist Adam Burgasser and artist Tara Knight focusing on interpreting stellar-data through performance, sound, and media-work. Recent works are sci-fi projects that play with the wisdom, folly, and neurotic obsession found in the discourse of interstellar memory, childhood nostalgia, and political rage. Between 2013–15 Michael directed the expansive SESMI & Tell Them Everything / Remember Us (T2ERU) project investigating virtual-reality, LIDAR, 4K cinema, and stereoscopic strategies. His 2017 film, Twelve Transmissions from the Occupied States Orbiting the Sun, has been included in exhibitions and screenings in New York City, San Francisco, London, San Diego, and Portland. In 2013, Michael received the UC San Diego Distinguished Teaching Award for his work in the Department of Visual Arts where he teaches students in contemporary media art and sound.