13. transverse orientation
2020, video 13:27
Organized by Britta Johnson | Commissioned by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture
in the summer of 2020, during the long months of covid-19 lockdowns, in response to an invitation from artist and curator Britta Johnson, i made a video that is a love letter to the sun. not as an object, but as a being, an archivist, a watchful documentor, an elusive lover.
the video is entitled ‘transverse orientation’ in reference to the survival instinct that often leads moths and birds to travel fatally towards artificial light sources, mistaking them for the light of the sun. in response to Britta’s prompt, which stated: “part of the idea is that you’d be making it within the limits of the covid stay-at-home - at home, with available gear and resources,” i recorded the entire final video on my desktop, opening up dozens of videos in different windows on my desktop, often overlapping, and timing their minimization with the audio track, which i typed in an open text edit window at the top of the desktop as a way of providing captions for viewers.
the audio track was made with similarly low-fi techniques. i recorded myself reciting the poem with a tape recorder, and then played it back while reciting the poem again, recording both overlapping tracks on another tape recorder. i did this over and over, capturing the haunting and echoing audio feedback between both cassette players, until i had the final track, which included eight of these final recordings layered on top of each other in this analog way.
for the video, i continued the work that i had started with my show against the archive, as well as the public art commission what can the light tell us? - seeing the light and the sun as a record keeper, a kind of camera that records and archives, continuously, the many objects, beings, and people that it has cast shadows on since the beginning of time.