Transforming Space Statement

This is a short 3.5 minute summary and critique of my Transforming Space project. This video/audio project documents the Gates Factory demolition in Denver and attempts to present or question issues of urban development, architectural memory and historic preservation. Eventually if I continue with the project, I would like to present many different perspectives on these complicated issues. In this first version I include interviews with a demolition employee who has a personal history with the factory and also an artist who finds inspiration from this space.
This factory is being transformed physically by demolition and redevelopment but also metaphysically through visual art.

Chel White

Today Tim showed us some Chel White videos. I find his work amazing. It often has an animation feel, low fi photos and photocopied images turned to a choppy video paired with hi fi sampled sound. One piece has stunning images of various children floating in water, they look serene, completely content as if they returned to the womb. Then he juxtaposes them with images of the klu klux klan, the atomic bomb, marching armies and destroyed cities. The piece ends with adults submerged in water, panicked and screaming.
The other video I connected with is called “the eclipse.” He creates ephemeral Francesca Woodmanesque images to match poetry. He uses sampled sounds and bits of text, creating a montage of poetry, sound and images. Perhaps this style is a solution to my gates project. A combination of echoing voices, text, constuction and deconstuction. I found some photographs today of the factory constuction in the Denver Historical Society’s archives. I may juxtapose these with the deconstruction. I may splice the interviews into an audio piece, a poem.

Inside the Factory / Inside the Stone Lion

I had a conversation with Gary Isaacs the other day about the insides of the gates factory. I say “insides” because that’s exactly what it felt like when he described the interior filled with loose wires, shadows, decaying walls, floorboards and odd machinery. I had a dream last night about this space, the internal organs. It felt like the discovery of a crashed spaceship or a sunken ship, filled with remnants, perhaps even voices of the past. It reminded me of these photos I made inside the old stone lion building of ephemeral figures representing the intangible, mysteries of life and beyond.

Laurie Anderson working as NASA resident artist

(From her lecture and movie presentation at the University of Maryland, College Park on April 4, 2007.) “So I was working in the studio one day, feeling sorry for myself, when I suddenly got this phone call, and the guy told me I was selected to be the resident artist at NASA. I said, ‘Well what does that mean “artist in residence”, what can I offer a bunch of scientists?’, and he said, ‘I don’t know either’. Turns out scientists and artists have a lot more in common than one would think. Neither of them knows what is it they’re looking for and they both start out with a set of tools and try to come closer towards that certain something.”