“Man is a bridge not an end.”
“There is wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and sore out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces.” – Herman Melville
A certified Going Under Project.
Under-going is, in fact, a formation reaction from contact with the art and entertainment industry, known colloquially as show business.
The years spent going under began in 1989 when it became necessary. All contact with the exoplanet, art and entertainment did cease, and it wasn’t much to begin with.
Reclusion, for any number of reasons is nothing new. Others went under, in fiction and philosohy – Z. and in actual life and religion – X. They naturally wanted to explain the truths that isolation would allow them to perceive.
Unlike them, i know that there are no eyes, ears or eras for it in the first place. In forgotten places, it’s protection, not from a contagion, that i am immune to, but poison, and people run from poison, don’t they?
I went under, but, as a bridge. As far as crossing, a tunnel serves the same purpose.
The archive grows without the useless ruthless distractions brought on by by something whose center and heart is a conceit, or a selfish transaction. It’s only a problem if your ties are real, character is top dog or soul is the goal. While, of course, there remains other problems.
Gross achievement without witness proves, by stripping all currencies from photographic actions. It also opens up huge amounts of fresh, blank time for new production. So i went down and there i shot film, and that’s all i did for years, never making a print or even a proof sheet, let alone “showing.” And like i said, i went down, which was literally and physically true. Being physically present is a precondition for applying thought to action. A camera in the world, is action, and physical truth its object, if i want it to be. It originates in contact, thought and curiosity, and, through the process of capture, is tested, then expanded, and flipped as object, the picture.
The most interesting thing about any Going Under project is that they are characterized by not really knowing how the picture will turn out, as in using ultra-long exposures on color film in a no light situation, or attempting to capture something that’s, more or less, impossible to do. Shooting night-for-day, flipping cinema’s low-budget practice, takes time but can be done as evidenced here.
The Erie Frieght Tunnel, Jersey City, 1997. It’s completely dark, and, using an ultra-long exposure on color film negative, the landscape begins to fill with light.
I was already in touch with all types of forgotten places, it made only sense, and was the only move and choice left, even if making meant sinking. Something can only be toxic to its antipode and i went places partly to escape poison, in places where social contagions can’t survive, and i can produce without needless distractions.
Macosica, Montana 4:00 am
McKees Rock, Utah 12:00 am
Bisti, New Mexico 3:00 am
At 11,000 feet in the arid White Mountains doesn’t seem like a good place for a tree, but if one could survive there, it could live a long time since there are no threats up here. This bristlecone pine was shot at night in a noe nour exposure.
On the earth’s surface, the most timeless living things are the bristlecone pines, whose strategy for survival for the long-term is going where no other plants, insect, bacteria, parasites and few fungii can live. Its isolation above the tree line on dry rocky surfaces where no other living things care to go, translates into a very long life. A dense wood, its rings are tight and many and will dessicate sections of itself to live longer. It’s the ultimate land-dwelling survialist.
Another big reminder and lesson in reclusion as a strategy for protection, production and survival, and a formation reaction as good as any geological feature, like erosion turned inside out.
Above the tree line, you’re alone except for those of your species. But there is an area in the White Mountains in Califiornia that has groves of bristlecone pine including the oldest which no one has seen for sure since it’s protected completely by the park service. It’s called “Methuselah“, and is a Great Basin bristlecone pine that is 4,851 years old.
If you think the parks service is being over-protective, the visitor center, containing all the exhibits, and a number of bristlecone pines themselves was set ablaze, and the destruction was complete.
Desolate physical landscapes can be out of reach for most, but no-choice desolation like prison or illness, still transforms people, often into religious conversions. Like i say, i went down and under, because i already knew the way, and the places i spent time allowed for protection by virtue of being strongholds.
For us all, it’s really just the pleasure of the image, and of something that clearly exists. I’m annotating here, about absurd mentally-adled people in a friends as business mode, in, what’s now, the disinformation house of mirrors. Similar to, when in a completely impossible situation, one resorts to satire to sublimate the anger, i resorted to going under in a largely successful attempt to not have any contact with the self-interested.
The forgotten landscape. The fact that i can relate to it, or find protection there, says something, precisely, that the truth of the one who is over is he will always be under, unless he’s a tyrant.
And people are assholes.