From: Peter Rose (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Sep 25 2009 - 20:54:39 PDT
I have heard, through the grapevine, that questions have been raised about
"Journey to Q'xtlan". I've been unable to actually read the postings, having
just resubscribed to Frameworks, so this is akin to one of those phone
conversations where you can't hear the other person speaking but have to
formulate an intellilgent response nevertheless...... "Journey..." is the fifth
in a suite of works that are grounded in what I (somewhat facetiously) call
"transfalumination." Titles are "The Darkening," "Omen," "Studies in
Transfalumination," "E Questriations", and "Journey to Q'xtlan." Throughout,
I've been interested in finding a way to somehow speak with light and to find
thereby a luminal relationship with the world that is both incantatory and
sensual. To this end I've designed an array of portable lighting
instruments that project sheets of light, rather than beams of light, and I've been
experimenting with these on a variety of scales ranging from blades of grass
to fairly large landscapes. None of the images are made with any sort of
animated strategy- while there is, occasionally, superimposition, and while
some of the images have been slowed down, all are made in real time, in real
space. I understand this all as arising from the confluence of two grand
traditions in the avant-garde. There is the work that is concerned with the
unadulterated, fundamental properties of light (Sharits, Kubelka, McCall,
Recoder, Brakhage, the later Jacobs,et al.) And then there is a somewhat
contrapuntal cabal that is more invested in ceremony, shamanic ritual,
transformation, the unconscious, a performative sense of the medium that is far
more narrative and lyrical; I’m thinking of Anger, Broughton, Deren,
Brakhage, early Gerson, et al. I'm hoping I've answered something here. Should
there be further curiosity I’d be happy to respond.
Peter Rose
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