Dead West

2023

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Multi-channel installation and film exhibition.

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Contemporary Art Center,

University of California, Irvine

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DEAD WEST is a collection of video and audio installations deconstructing American mythology through landscape, process, and the Western genre. Each piece in the installation presents a phenomenological encounter with the material properties of light and sound and positions the spectator as the senseometer, as an apparatus “built” to receive and interact with the physicality of the mediums. The phenomenological encounter places the spectator’s experience of the installation as a central concern and purpose of the work, making the spectator the conduit that completes the circuit of each piece and, by extension, the installation. Each piece in the installation places the spectator in the piece in a different way, from engulfing them in the cinematic, as in “’By a horse America shall live’ saith the Oracle to the New World”,  to pushing them away to reveal  the construction of narrative through time, as in “The Pioneer’s” Technicolor Process, to a blend of both cinematic engulfing and distancing that leads to the subsumption of the work, process, and spectator, as inPioneer Town Loop. As the spectator moves through the installations and experiences each piece of the installation, they are met with and confronted by an opportunity of consent. As works that seek to evoke phenomenological experiences in, for, and with the spectator, DEAD WEST is a physical installation and must be approached cautiously and with an openness to the experience. Each encounter is a position and an opportunity for the spectator to engage with and complete the function of the process of the work.