GOLDMINES!
Creative Statement: GOLDMINES! A Record from Wendover, UT
After blasting down I-80 West across the great Salt Flats, after getting your eyes burnt through by the opticality of so much nothingness, as my friend and colleague Patrick Kikut describes it, Wendover is a vortex that sucks you in. Like a black hole on earth, all of the contrasts in nature, society and culture are compacted into the most miniscule of locations where one can’t help but to examine them in their absurd proximity: Utah / Nevada, military / civilian, rich / poor, growth / decay, piety / revelry, immigrant / native. That there is so much and so little at the same time in one place became the overarching theme for the creative research I did in response to my experience at the Wendover Residence Program at the Center for Land Use Interpretation.
Visually, this is some of the most minimal work I have ever done – there’s not much there to look at on the Salt Flats. At the same time, the work is maximal in terms of the processes employed so that what you don’t see becomes paramount.