201. Star Chart

This audio tour has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: NEH CARES. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this audio, do not necessarily represent those of the NEH. Transcript Star Chart features work from a current ongoing project with the working title Deep Space. I consider the three completed films in Night Reels a trilogy and Deep Space is both similar and moving in a new direction. I try to build on the techniques I employ as I address a new project and in this case I will be adding text to the film in a collaboration with the poet Mary Szybist. What you see here is still silent, however. The landscape for the film is outer space and the film will feature Lillian Gish and Janet Gaynor. I plan to have a subtext involving aging, since Lillian Gish had a long cinematic career and she ages on the silver screen. She made her final film The Whales of August in 1989 when she was 92 years old. The images of her here are from a very early Biograph film called The Mothering Heart that she made as a teenager. I’m exploring contemporary feelings of uncertainty and peril. The film Deep Space is an internal exploration of the power of beauty and imagination alongside the specter of annihilation. For the Star Chart I made 3 loops from the work I have completed and placed them in this wooden disc that features a reproduction of a 19th century star chart. My collaborator Michael Schliske constructed the frame and put the piece together. I like the way the disc gives context to the loops and that there are screens occupying the surface like blinking solar systems in the vastness.