My new project in 2009 is Tesserae of Venus -- a science-fiction like study moving between fantasy and documentation, in ink/watercolor drawings, photomontage and especially series of abstract experimental documentary films shot as single channel videos, like a concept album, This project interprets energy-producing technological landscapes in California as if they were saturated by the carbon atmosphere of Venus. The videos will take place in remote central and southern California, at the edges of the urban environment, at oil fields, geothermal seismic system plants, and solar energy fields. the complex ecosystem/tech environment at the edges of urban space.
I film a single person, myself or another, in a solo remote performance in spontaneous performance making a drawing like gesture inside a remote landscape environment. The shoots involve a poignant gesture or kairotic moment, which in urban slang now means, not only the 'perfect time or apt moment of luck,' but in a strange reversal also "is used to express gayness or queerness or just to make fun of people who you don't like as in "You are very kairotic" or "go away you kairotic bastard" " (urbandictionary.com). So somehow in these stressed, out of the way, even underimaged, presumably ugly topographies -- bastard spaces i dream of salamander moves , tracking the slimey traces of petroleum, following the fire lizard into the fires. Fires of another kind- pulling up energy from heat near the mantle deep, heating water to steam pitch for turbine drives-. I have been shooting since late 2006 at Ballona Wetlands in Los Angeles, the Salton Sea in Imperial County, California; the Sunset Midway oil fields near Taft, California in Kern County; and, in the near future, at new solar energy fields at the Carrizo Plain northwest of LA. In December I shot at San Ardo oil fields in the upper Salinas Valley. I am also now shooting in the Salinas Valley, the "east of Eden" of Steinbeck's vision. Yesterday I shot Pacific Gas and Electric substations in Soledad. All of these sites are under intense pressure from the scramble to survive in a desperate economy, and the collapse of outlier urban development. The desperate search for work by migrants and the native poor-- the carlots loaded with cars no one can afford-- the spectacular panoramas of the mountains above the plains unchanged since preColumbian times-- these layers intersect and weave into a narrative of strange beauty and restless tensions, something wild at heart; the landscape takes on an aspect of tracings or shimmerings at the edges as if the swoosh of the unpredictable goddess of beauty and desire sounds like the Doppler effect of passing frieght on the Union Pacific. It's intriguing to push an extreme fantasy into this mix, by comparing them to Venus. In an allegorical-- or maybe, metanymic, sense , as a 'stand in' shorthand for the mysterious arrival of 'Aphrodite-' love-- but also, carbon atmospheric saturation-- The slippage between our love of Earth and our desperate scramble to build new energy systems-- is there anything beautiful about carbon? Across multiple related sites, I want to say, these sites generate another kind of energy, an erotic or, better, kairotic energy. Just to witness this as a process moving through every media, drawing to montage to print to video and back again--. -------Christina Bio: A moderator of -empyre-, Christina McPhee (US) was born in LA, studied at Kansas City Art Institute (BFA) and Boston University in painting (MFA), and later moved into cinematic media and photography as well. New exhibitions 2008/9 include Bucharest Biennial 3, twice upon a time at Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna; Bad Moon Rising at Boots Contemporary, Saint Louis, Pace Digital Gallery New York in April 2009 for 'Plazaville' with GH Hovagimyan and Artists Meeting; Videoformes 2009 Clermont-Ferrand, France. "Tesserae of Venus" will debut at Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, in October 2009. http://christinamcphee.net -- Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art Cornell University _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
