Sedimentary Noise video

sound in collaboration with Edward Avila and Gabe Ente (vrai)
single channel video, sound, 30 minutes

Sedimentary Noise looks at how we are informed by our technological interactions, what controls us, and how we strive to identify the socio-political implications of power within the constructs of the human condition. Touching on the relationship of mind and body, the power and limits of the will, and the influence of past experience to the present, Sedimentary Noise references Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, in which the central character sinks deeper and deeper into a mound of earth. Although Beckett’s Winnie cries out wearily, she also expresses the playwright’s admiration of our durability: “That is what I find so wonderful. The way man adapts himself. To changing conditions.” In Sedimentary Noise, the subject is being slowly buried in sand within a tall transparent cylinder, layer by layer, shielded from suffocation by a gas mask. As with Beckett’s character, there is an acceptance of this predicament – an allegory for the ways in which humans endure and persist through daily challenges, a mediated existence and the encroaching sands of time.

Installation view from Root Division Gallery, San Francisco