media: single-channel video, asynchronous single-channel audio
duration: 15’03”
dimensions: variable
year: 2014
presented as part of the solo exhibition ‘The Persistence of Traces‘ at Audio Visual Arts in New York City.
A video taken at the edge of the forest behind my childhood home, a single unmoving shot taken up through the tree above the free-standing woodstove that heats the house. I am always fascinated by the listening condition of the forest – near total visual occlusion while sonically vast. The layering of the forest however is not a monolithic mass, but strata of different ages, sizes, types and depths. These layers fight for primacy as vision oscillates forward and back – different sizes recording the trace of the wind at different speeds. The smoke at the front layer causes anxiety; in the absence of knowledge of the source, the smoke could mean fire, the initial silence of the video denying confirmation. The sound track of wind coming from a window on the opposite wall of the gallery serves to direct, but not force the connection with the wind.
