S A L T
Locative video and sound, 9’ 26” 2004
Carrizo Plains (Soda Lake), California
a film by christina mcphee
Video/performance/piano/edit Christina
McPhee
onsite sound recording, composition and design by Sariah Storm
a naxsmash group production
SALT is born of the 6.5 magnitude San Simeon earthquake of
December 2003. The night of the quake, I used low tech against high tech –
a mini dv Canon Ellura to record the mass media’s take on the destruction
– television’s six o clock lineup.
Amid dismal reportage, an antagonist appears, taking recordings. Her black silhouette tracks something only she can hear, into white heat at Soda Lake, where I am discovered drawing in the dry salt.
The SALT edit folds in 2 second frames of the paintings and digital photographs of the [Strike}/Slip installation.
A hypogogic dream makes sure you are sure you are seeing:
so SALT draws memory and the erases of memory by handmade digital remix of locative audio and video into a place both seen and difficult to remember.
The brain tracks shock and the aftermath in sharp flashes for storage in a communal amygdala, where the brain stores trauma. SALT recalls the tale of Lot’s wife who froze into a pillar of salt when she turned back to gaze on the destruction of her city. Is the freeze frame a white-out revenge against remembering too well, too much?