reconfiguring horizons

Core Samples 04 — Think back to the journeys you have made. Consider any kind of journey, defined simply as moving from one place to another. Select what seems important and examine the sequence of events which comprise it.

The recent journey through the southwest which I took with my mom was the journey I wanted to make a project about. It was a very inspirational time. I had always heard about art-infused Santa Fe, about Native American culture, breathtaking landscapes, and iconic Route 66. When my mom wanted to take me on a vacation and asked me where I want to go—Bali, Indonesia, or Hong Kong—I said “New Mexico.” I knew I had to go to the southwest. It was a gut-response place of interest. I wanted to see the natural landscapes and the museums. I felt the place was calling, though I had never been there. It was a place of myth and magic, tied to the land and to its historical routes. It was both exotic and familiar, iconic and abstract.

My mom planned the whole trip. I was working in Boston for the first part of the summer and read her itineraries on the commuter rail. I was very stifled by Providence, and needed to get out. I was yearning freedom, for open space, for driving and seeing and inspiration. Then, right before the trip, I suffered a fall from a horse and a concussion. I was bed ridden for about two weeks, and even after that was not quite my energetic self. Luckily I mostly recovered by the time I went to San Francisco. I couldn’t wait to leave Rhode Island, to leave my bed and my apartment. To start driving. To explore. To see new things. The journey was not just a vacation, but a chance to live again.

We drove and drove. 400 miles a day was not untypical; 200 miles was a light day. Whenever I wanted to stop, we wouldn’t have the time. My mom wanted to drive and drive so we would make it to the next stop by sundown. I was experimenting with a new camera which has 4 lenses but seldom had time to pull it out due to the excessive driving. As a result, I took most of the pictures from the car window. The camera did not even have a view finder. I pointed the camera out the window and shot. Without meaning to, most of the shots focused on horizon. Sometimes taken during the day, sometimes taken at sunset, the wide open sky became the symbol for the southwest. It became the symbol for traveling along open freeways and seeing the landscape which extended, uninterrupted, in all directions. Symbolically, it was about as far as I could have gotten from my bed in Providence. In constant motion, I was amazed and inspired.

The journey was a whirlwind of fast experiences coming from different directions. Despite the onslaught of imagery, every isolated moment I savored as beautiful and unique. I felt I had already been there, and it was everything I imagined it to be. It awakened in me an urge to discover what lies down the road, a sense of adventure and curiosity which had been dormant. It also awakened my eyes to see beauty in the mundane, and to capture the commonplace. The goal for me was not the destination but the journey. So I captured the road, the gas stations, the signs, the sunsets, and the horizons. This translated my vacation better than any official photo spot would have.

on re-presentation

Iterations work within framing to construct new representation and to re-represent reality. taking a photograph of place is already a one step removed representation. Re-framing, re cropping, translating into a new medium is a further interpretation. While working with fragments and juxtaposing them together, I also reinterpret old projects intomedia. Maybe, I take the wax book and scan it in to create a flat page which is a picture of the tactile wax. Or, I will take photograph of a demolition site wall and print it out on silk to hang in an installation creating new, fabric walls out of real walls. It is the play of "what is real?", "what is interpretation?", "what is re-framing?"that is the focus of these studies.