Field notes in a
subliminal world, the Diaries record active tectonic traces of
a geologic diary within the shifting terrain of human remembrance
and amnesia. Layering field notes and drawings with traces from
geomorphologic maps, the artist displaces the subjective experience
of traumatic memory inside a series of abstract remixes, combining
precisely observed local detail within the omnipresence of seismic
data. Observing appearance and disappearance of surface cracks
and shifts in the aftermath of major disturbances in the field,
the Diaries record a seismic landscape where visualization is never
completely clear, and triggers both illuminate and occlude memory.
Conceptually, the current data’s reach into the past changes the archive
from a static resource to an uncanny future array: layers of
fiction trigger from the disturbances, much like the way human
memory reconfigures itself after shock.
The Diaries incorporate
layers of field observation within a dream-like sequence of abstract
images, where passages of linear structures and shadowed mass
allude to ruins and debris in the wake of recent tremors. By
means of architectural scale, at 50 to 120 inches, each print
resembles a ‘vertical frozen cinema’ (Ryan Griffis) —film
stills from an event-scene that has almost materialized, laced
with traces from geomorphologic maps. The mapping samples open
source visualizations of changing Parkfield surface and subsurface
terrains in the aftermath of the M 6.0 tremor at Parkfield (September
2004) and a 6.5 earthquake centered in San Simeon, California
in 2003. In the Diaries, layers of images, text and sound from
the Carrizo Plains and Parkfield react to one another and in
so doing build an infrastructure that resembles the slow rebuilding
of memory after trauma. Echoing the appearance and disappearance
of surface cracks and shifts in the aftermath of major disturbances
in the field, the Diaries assay the neural topologies of nightmare
and trauma, where visualization is never completely clear, and
triggers both illuminate and occlude memory. Field notes in a
subliminal world, the Diaries record active tectonic traces of
a geologic diary within the shifting terrain of human remembrance
and amnesia.
The Carrizo-Parkfield Diaries were first shown at
Transport Gallery, an artist-run cooperative in downtown Los
Angeles, in March-April 2005. In January 2006 they appeared as
part of “Persona/Personae” at Sara Tecchia Roma New
York, in Chelsea. The entire suite was shown in solo exhibition
most recently at the Katzen Art Center, American University Museum,
Washington, DC, in June-July 2007.
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