Introduction to Taxonomy of Unusual Events on the Mountain installation at Moody Gallery 2010
Drawing from Goethe’s writing on morphology, pre-Enlightenment Cabinets of Curiosities, Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau, dazzle paint and anti-rangefinding camouflage schemes of World War I and II, and the Nature Conservancy’s efforts to preserve the environment, Taxonomy of Unusual Events on the Mountain represents collections of experiences on the mountain.
Because the artifacts in Natural History Museums are very fragile, they are often displayed through reproductions. Fragile drawings are similarly preserved in art museums. Our culture recognizes the fragility of natural areas. Greatly reduced in scale by development and managed by humans, these landscapes are preserved and protected within fenced boundaries. In order to protect the site and create only the slightest disturbance, I photograph and video in order to create a biography of place just as an archaeologist photographs to reproduce artifacts on site. My photos and videos are used to assemble new spaces indoors from the flux of experiences outdoors. In turn, the new environments are photo-documented as part of a continuing process, changing viewpoint, and moving gestalt of the work.
Original photography is regularly re-photographed and sometimes re-formatted in an effort both to preserve the photograph and to describe didactically the material for contemporary viewers. For instance, photographs of a 1960s conceptual art performance might be handled this way. The original photograph of the fugitive event becomes itself an artifact that requires special handling and contextualization for the viewer. Replication preserves the original and distances us from it. The idea developed from my interest in the parallels between the complexity of re-presenting the memory of an ephemeral conceptual art event and re-presenting the memory of an ephemeral event in the natural world. Tracking my own “traveling images” as they change locations and contexts I develop a continuum of images. One photograph taken on Mt. Livermore went from studio to installation to book to centerfold of BOMB magazine. Recently I re-photographed the magazine centerfold and placed it within the installation, Taxonomy of Unusual Events on the Mountain. The photographs within and the photo-documentation of Taxonomy of Unusual Events on the Mountain are together considered documents and artifacts.