PROJECT STATEMENT_ CAULEEN SMITH_ ARTIST STATEMENT

REMOTE VIEWING: Process Sculpture Film #1

The digital cinema loop, REMOTE VIEWING: Process Sculpture Video #1 triangulates iconic site-specific land art practices of the seventies with historical narratives that relate to contemporary relationships to land. The figures activate and contextualize the land-space. Indicating potential narratives while never closing off the formal investigations of the images and the process of transforming the land-space.

It feels to me, in this 21st century increasingly difficult create media dealing with the formal sculptural potentials of land-as-material without  addressing the histories, cultures, and peoples associated with the land. This video process sculpture graphically speaks the language of cinema, but denies the viewer a satisfying narrative. The strain between story and image is an attempt to undermine our natural attachment to narrative (which ultimate alienates us from the image). My aim is to encourage the viewer to enter the graphic space of the moving images and discover the tensions inherent in the spectacle of trauma (obscenity) and the advocacy of history (protest).  The dialectic established between the visual information and physical grace of the figures and objects within the frame stretches and bends against small indications that the process we witness is not simply, could never ever simply be about form.

This digital film was shot on a Redcam in 4k with Cooks lenses. This project is part of a series funded by Creative Capital.