Christoph Keller Future Archeologists, 2023
3-channel HD video installation (color, sound)
Dimensions variable
With Future Archeologists Christoph Keller revisits the subjects of his own past as a trained hydrologist. The three-channel video installation presents an artistic survey into the environmental conditions in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in California.
Point of departure and formal center of Keller’s video installation are three filmic perspectives shot over the vast landscape of the now desiccated Owens Lake.
The Owen Valley and the surroundings of the lake was once flourishing, and its indigenous Paiute people maintained complex irrigation systems. In 1913, an aqueduct to provide for the city of Los Angeles was constructed, diverting Owens valley’s waters and letting the lake dry out in just 15 years. Subsequently, the area became infamous as a source of dust pollution. In the early 2000s an extensive landscape transformation program was launched in some parts of the former lakebed, seeking to alleviate the development of toxic dust clouds traveling as far as Los Angeles. This dust mitigation project is in the focus of Keller’s filmic inquiry.
Keller's three-channel video installation presents the Owens Lake landscape from an aerial viewpoint. The video on the left channel moves in spiraling sweeps across the landscape, the central video relentlessly follows along the main supply road of the dust mitigation project, while the footage on the right channel moves in steadily sweeping movements toward the center of the former lake with disconcertingly beautiful vistas of mountainous terrain surrounding the dry lake’s plain. As the camera travels across the mesmerizing landscape, we hear a conversation between Keller and a geologist, accompanied by a constant digitally generated glissando music, carefully calibrated to create a mixture of aesthetic detachment and dystopian realism. The images of the ecological desolation are subtly compounded by the dialogue which reveals—in what sounds like mild-mannered understatement—the breath-taking futility of a monumental industrialized process developed to contain the effects of an environmental destruction in perpetuity.
Keller’s work carefully draws from a dialectical aggregate of wide-ranging references: literary and pictorial representations, science and science fiction, colonial histories and community politics, timelessness and timefullness of the landscape.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:
– The installation requires 3 flat screens 75" diagonal (ref. Samsung DM75E); 3 4K media players that are synced together to play three channel video (ref. BrightSign HD223); 2 loudspeakers with one subwoofer element or 4 wireless headphones (ref. Sennheiser RS120 II)
COMPONENTS INCLUDED IN SALE:
– Master video file
– Installation manual
– Certificate of authenticity
Point of departure and formal center of Keller’s video installation are three filmic perspectives shot over the vast landscape of the now desiccated Owens Lake.
The Owen Valley and the surroundings of the lake was once flourishing, and its indigenous Paiute people maintained complex irrigation systems. In 1913, an aqueduct to provide for the city of Los Angeles was constructed, diverting Owens valley’s waters and letting the lake dry out in just 15 years. Subsequently, the area became infamous as a source of dust pollution. In the early 2000s an extensive landscape transformation program was launched in some parts of the former lakebed, seeking to alleviate the development of toxic dust clouds traveling as far as Los Angeles. This dust mitigation project is in the focus of Keller’s filmic inquiry.
Keller's three-channel video installation presents the Owens Lake landscape from an aerial viewpoint. The video on the left channel moves in spiraling sweeps across the landscape, the central video relentlessly follows along the main supply road of the dust mitigation project, while the footage on the right channel moves in steadily sweeping movements toward the center of the former lake with disconcertingly beautiful vistas of mountainous terrain surrounding the dry lake’s plain. As the camera travels across the mesmerizing landscape, we hear a conversation between Keller and a geologist, accompanied by a constant digitally generated glissando music, carefully calibrated to create a mixture of aesthetic detachment and dystopian realism. The images of the ecological desolation are subtly compounded by the dialogue which reveals—in what sounds like mild-mannered understatement—the breath-taking futility of a monumental industrialized process developed to contain the effects of an environmental destruction in perpetuity.
Keller’s work carefully draws from a dialectical aggregate of wide-ranging references: literary and pictorial representations, science and science fiction, colonial histories and community politics, timelessness and timefullness of the landscape.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:
– The installation requires 3 flat screens 75" diagonal (ref. Samsung DM75E); 3 4K media players that are synced together to play three channel video (ref. BrightSign HD223); 2 loudspeakers with one subwoofer element or 4 wireless headphones (ref. Sennheiser RS120 II)
COMPONENTS INCLUDED IN SALE:
– Master video file
– Installation manual
– Certificate of authenticity
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