I wrote the following article for the inaugural issue of Topographies Magazine edited by Rowynn Dumont. I’m pleased to be able to share it here on my blog.

George Kennedy, one of the stars of the box-office bomb, the 1973 film-musical version of the James Hilton novel Lost Horizon, died in February in Idaho. He was an iconic character actor who typically played a certain kind of Hollywood hero: unenigmatic, dependable. I remember seeing the movie on television as a kid, and thinking it was amazing: a latter-day Wizard of Oz. In my naivety I saw it as Hollywood meant it to be seen, as a dazzling spectacle not to be carefully scrutinized, in spite of the fact that the film lays on—rather thick—a “philosophical” message about the putative “utopia” of Shangri-La (where white people live in a palace waited upon—or have they been captured?—by Asians). In retrospect, this film is unintentionally postmodernist, although without any sense of irony; our own historical distance from its time make it more “readable.” What it sought to gloss over becomes obvious. The film is greatly entertaining, however, especially if you are an unabashed Burt Bacharach fan like me. Visually, the film is relatively unimaginative, with a too brightly lit Technicolor look, and staid, solid camera angles from the 1940s; but the songs are for the most part irrepressibly upbeat and dynamic, breezy 1970s pop tunes.
If George Kennedy is even by the early 1970’s a throwback to an earlier, seemingly less ambiguous time of manly, gung-ho Hollywood men, his love-interest interest, Sally Kellerman, is suitably beautiful and elegant—but at the beginning of the film in the midst of a Vietnam-era spiritual malaise: pill-popping and suicidal. She recovers, and he, thanks to her love—and Hollywood hokum—becomes more altruistic. I suppose it was—like the visuals and the music—intended as a marriage of Hollywood’s Golden Age and 1970s “counter-culture.” In a marvelous review detailing the film’s numerous failings—but also its definite charms as a “guilty pleasure”—Glenn Erickson tells us:

Initial reviewers of Lost Horizon tripped all over one another to fashion the cruelest put-downs in print. Unfortunately, most of what they complained about is true. The production is tacky in almost every respect, with the High Lama’s palace a poor revamp of a leftover set for 1967′s Camelot. The palace grounds look tossed together by Southern California pool & garden landscapers and the interior sets do indeed resemble generic Holiday Inn décor, with a bland ‘oriental’ theme.

Seeing the film recently I was struck by a sense of nostalgia—as my introduction probably reveals—but also by a sense of the uncanny. In the film a group of what are apparently Brits and Americans find themselves in Shangri-La. Is it real or not? Uncanny in German is Unheimlich—a much more revealing word that translates literally as “un-home-like.” Ironically, I was watching the film at home with my family, but had an odd sort of neither-here-nor-there feeling, a sense of the Unheimlich. I was not sure why. I had in mind (before looking it up) that the “palace” of Shangri-La was on a Hollywood backlot; indeed it was: Burbank. In June I flew in and out of Burbank—my first time in Southern California in many years—so there was a certain familiarity: one can see the smog in the air in the film—worse then probably than it is now. Shangri-La is Burbank—an under-two-hour flight for me. I am almost there already. Yet, there was another more powerful sense of the uncanny: the film opens with an aerial view of the “Himalayas” as the title sequence. A little research revealed that this was the North Cascades of Washington State, my home. Indeed, I think the shot at the beginning of the film is Mt. Baker, easily seen on a clear day from near here. So, this Unheimlichkeit stems from the knowledge that this un-home-like place of Shangri-La—unattainable, a fairy tale—is assembled in my own backyard.
Michel Foucault makes a distinction between utopia and heterotopia. A utopia is literally “without place,” but a heterotopia is a set-aside place, an actual space where things are different from the outside world. For the latter, Foucault uses the example of the religious colonies founded in the Americas. Perhaps Shangri-La means a utopian society in a heterotopia—the Valley of the Blue Moon is the place name in the film—separate from the world but contiguous with it. The film’s setting in the early 1970s makes Shangri-La’s invisibility to the outside world implausible, of course; aerial reconnaissance and spy satellites make the undiscovered place nearly impossible. Yet, what is more interesting is that it exists in the film: various locations on the West Coast are amalgamated—spliced—into something exotic, revealing that I already live there.

Here’s a short video of a mock-up of one of the figures for the Confessions Project I’m proposing for All Pilgrims Christian Church. Since I’m narrating it “live” I don’t want to write the same thing here, but I’ll give a few more details below. . . .

This figure, which is about 5’5″ tall (170 cm or so) is a single layer of a satiny material (I’m not sure exactly what it is – it was a gift!) attached to a tulle or petticoat-mesh panel. I typically look for a material that will let light through so the image can be seen from both sides, and in this case, I gathered the edges of the fabric randomly to achieve a rippling, water-like surface. I’m planning on making a few more of the figures out of different materials to test them, too. . .
I give more of an idea of the meaning of the project in the previous post, but suffice it to say that I’m grappling with the concept of time and what it means to us as we go through our lives. . .

This is a proposal for a sculptural video installation in which abstracted video images (with accompanying audio) would be projected upon life-size figurative mesh-forms, suspended from the ceiling in either the Sanctuary or Fellowship Hall. My idea is to have guests of the community suppers, which All Pilgrims co-sponsors, tell their own stories of past, present, and future.

One possibility is to call it “Confessions,” after St. Augustine’s famous book, in which he wrote:

“Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things future. For these three do coexist somehow in the soul, for otherwise I could not see them. The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation.”

Rather than a literal “confession” of sins, I see this as an opportunity for expression of where one sees oneself in life through Augustine’s anchor of the present.

Through this installation, participants can reflect on the past, report on the “time present of things present,” and project themselves into the future. Intentionally, the potentially unsettling nature of the stories of those who are possibly marginalized will be shown upon pristine, generic forms, conveying the idea that there is both a universality of a particular individual’s plight—and a universality of their hopes. The project will shed a literal light on the struggles of vulnerable populations, and transform personal experiences into a collective one for both the initial creators—the storytellers—and subsequently viewers.

Video imagery for the project could either be collected in “Confessionals” (such as the booths in Roman Catholic churches) in the Fellowship Hall and/or by participants using their smartphones other devices out in the community. The video imagery would be distorted, abstracted, as a result of the projection process and the shape of the mesh-forms; individual identities would not be apparent. Voices, though, might identify individuals, so the voice recordings might need to be altered to assure anonymity, or we could request permission for their unmodified use. Having participants sign a release form would have to be mandatory either way. Assuring that the project be as broadly based as possible is important, as it validates the claim for it being both by the community and for the community.

Due to light levels, a project like this would look best during the darker months or at night. Video projections would be nearly invisible when ambient light levels are high. An option would be to cover windows with something to reduce light transmission. That would allow viewing during worship times, for instance. The length of the exhibition should be several months so as to reach the largest possible audience.

I obviously have an image of this project in my mind’s eye, yet this the visual manifestation of it, not the entire meaning or context. I want to collaborate, to foster an environment of cooperation that ultimately creates the work of art. Might we have a musical, liturgical, or performance component, for instance, or link the project to broader community outreach goals?

Thank you for considering my initial concept for “Confessions.” I look forward to your comments.

The following is an artist’s statement that I’m working on for an upcoming show at Matzke Fine Art and Sculpture Park. It’s a group show with an environmental theme. Serendipitously, I had just been reading Andrew Bowie’s Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche for my PhD coursework at IDSVA. In the book there is a substantial discussion of Friedrich’s Schelling’s philosophy, and I was deeply influenced as you can see below. John Dewey echoes Schelling about a hundred years later in Experience and Nature. One wonders why these philosophies that espouse our being part of nature don’t seem to have much traction.

Artist’s Statement

We tend to talk today about our separation from nature. Indeed, it seems to be the case that we see nature as literally outside ourselves: the out-of-doors. We damage the environment without regard for the fact that we are in nature, destroying the very earth of which we are an integral part—like setting fire to a house in which we still want to live. Even very early in the 19th Century, but really before the Industrial Revolution affected Germany, Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) wrote about nature as having two aspects: unconscious forces, what we would call the natural world, and consciousness–including our own sentience–still part of the natural world, but enabling us to be (or to think we are) autonomous. Perhaps this seeming autonomy, our ability to think and act, makes us feel that we are beyond “unconscious” nature, when we are merely an extension of it.
My own sculpture is an exploration of the balance between what I would have previously called the “natural world” and the “man-made world,” but there is an inherent opposition. Instead, I’d like to follow Schelling’s lead and project ourselves within a unity of nature of which we are part. Obviously this does not solve the obvious problem of the divide in which we often find ourselves as humans: seemingly opposed to everything else in the world (and subsequently alienated). Yet the connection we have with art is an example of how we actively engage in a positive way with our world.
My work is ultimately optimistic in that it offers a kind of harmony. I juxtapose incongruous elements, not necessarily to cause a clash, but to create something mythic, something that exists outside of time and the normal rules. A work of art ought to be a bit strange, that place in the world where something new happens.

Here is a video created by the inimitable Sarah Gettys documenting my set-up of Gothic Forest in the gallery at the Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts at South Puget Sound Community College in late February.