Among the geothermal plants and the border
patrol stations in Imperial County California, along the Salton Sea
and further south towards the border near Calexico. I started putting
together inventory-like images composed of montages of the strange
energy plants with the natural fens, the sea, and the surveillance
areas of the patrols.These in long filmstrip like sequences or like
film stills in long chains, clear but static. At first I thought
the work was querying a space between technological proliferation,
the natural reserves of swamp and field, and intrusion of border
patrols. Then I thought, imagine in a sci-fi kind of way how, if
the positive energy of culture has gone underground, along with the
many lost ones who try the border crossing, it might in future return
via the strange live buzz of the geothermal apparatus, which actually
create huge wealths of steam from the underground volcanic heat rising
from the San Andreas Fault. Instead of the heroic dead, from the
themal plants arrive the slightly nerdy, awkward, vulnerable performance
spirits. Probably by accident, they're resurrecting dead contact
zones, are busy scamming on the techonological scheme, pretending
to be casual. Like circus performers their perfection becomes visible
in lapses. The lyrical image is often disdained in conceptual practice.
How to imagine the border country, techno-control-purgatory, without
a poetics that flows from the repressed imaginary?
Shot at Salton
Sea fall and winter 2007, with additional video stills from performances
which occurred in celebration of the Green Wedding 1 by Annie Sprinkle
and Elizabeth Stephens, Shakespeare Grove, Santa Cruz, California,
May 2008.
 |
