"Shawnee Revisited" at Errant Sound in Berlin

Opening tomorrow, Tuesday June 20

This is a quick note to say that Shawnee, Revisited — a three channel video and sound installation exploring the past and present of a small Appalachian Ohio town — will be opening at Errant Sound gallery in Berlin. It opens tomorrow, June 20, at 6:00pm, alongside a sound installation by Jeremy Woodruff called Sonic Borderlands, which highlights the sounds of protest from around the world. You can learn more about the program (and find directions to the gallery) below. Jeremy and I will be there in person; if you happen to be in Berlin, it would be great to see you!

In the three channel video (presented here on a single screen), viewers experience contemporary footage of Shawnee (filmed by expert videographer and artist Jon Johnson): quiet streets, a local opera house, and still interiors that invite slowness and contemplation. The images appear to be photographs, yet when more time is spent with them, more is seen: trees gently sway, summer heat radiates through the air, a cobweb waves in the wind, a flag moves, a sign reflects sunlight.

Watch an excerpt here:

The images are met with sudden transitions into the past, creating a slowly unfolding montage between contemporary video and archival and home movies. Stop the motion of this archival footage at any point and a world of visual noise, sunbursts, cracks, and film deterioration is revealed; the film’s own history is recorded alongside the people and places it depicts.

On the two side images, seasons transition — of landscapes, parades, portraits, and social life — while mining remains ever-present in-between. The earliest footage is of miners exiting from their underground work (reminiscent of the Lumière brothers’ famous films of workers leaving a factory), and of their carbide-lighted hats slowly dancing in the darkened mines. Above ground, children move in parallel motion to the miners, parading down Main Street for Halloween or the Fourth of July or Memorial Day: side-by-side rituals marking the change of time, the environmental and economic costs of extraction, the entwined patterns and rhythms of culture and labor.

Throughout, sound unfolds as a background of instrumental long tones, gradually shifting and evoking the always present forest, surrounding Shawnee and nearby towns. Some of these sounds were recorded in the very places that viewers see in the Shawnee footage, further blurring past and present. We also hear the voices of local residents, speaking and singing of work, friendship, disaster, and death. Together, these voices and sounds create a sonic world that places past and present together, offering ways to move into the future.

I hope you can make it to the event!

Happy listening,

Brian