Unraveling Mars is a choreography of moving pictures. As two hands open and unroll reels of silver gelatin images, the first photographs taken on Mars slide across the picture plane in front of the camera’s stationary view. At times, the image lingers long enough for the viewer to take in the landscape, before moving ever forward in a blur of inaccessible scenes. The passing compositions of rocks and rubble are both full of mystery and incredibly banal, echoing the slow and laborious process of exploration itself. The hands feature prominently in the video, wearing purple nitrile gloves to protect the archival material. Unraveling Mars shows how the handling of archival material from those remote lenses that scanned the planet decades ago is connected to an act of physical touch here on Earth.