Pretend your thoughts are like plants (one)
Single-channel video with sound, color
5:45
2017





Pretend your thoughts are like plants (two)
Single-channel video with sound, color
16:10
2017





Pretend your thoughts are like plants (three)
Single-channel video with sound, color
7:50
2017





A series of videos that use clips from Zabriskie Point to think through looping, abstraction, the unavoidable distancing that results from close looking, and ethically dubious uses of abstraction and aestheticization in representations of violence and disaster.

The foundational element of the first video is a brief clip from Zabriskie Point in which police officers shoot an unarmed Black Panther protester in LA. By refusing to show the victim of police action, but maintaining the audio element of the crime, the video builds an asynchronous loop. Rifle shots layer on top of overzealous police until all that remains is an abstracted wall of sound and pure white light. After reaching fever pitch, the video reverses the movement, peeling back the layers of abstraction and returning to the single original clip.

The second video uses a brief clip of a man running down a desert hill, either yowling with excitement or screaming in fear. Starting with a dramatically slowed down clip (around 25 times slower than real time), the video gradually layers slightly faster audio clips on top of each other, as he video clip increase in speed towards the original clips playback duration. As the audio reaches fever pitch and the video is at its fastest, the process reverses-the slowest bass notes start to fall away as the video clip slows back down, until all you are left with is a glacially paced man falling down a hill with rapid, incessant wailing looped beneath it.

The most recent video in the series uses a brief clip of a woman running through the desert while producing a sound lower than a scream, louder than a hum. The same video and its accompanying audio loop repeatedly, with a new layer being added every round. By the middle of the video, every frame of the clip is simultaneously layered on top of the others, and all of the audio tracks blur into a scream. Maintaining the density of the image, the audio layers begin to fall away but increase in volume. ending with a maximum volume, single-voiced scream supporting a clip in which everything is happening, all at once.