John Gerrard, "Dust Storm (Dalhart, Texas)" (2007).
If you have yet to visit the 53rd Venice Biennale, on view through November 22, make sure when you do you stop by the island of Certosa. Located there is one of the most contemporary works in the biennale – in terms of technology and in terms of content. In fact, John Gerrard’s “Animated Scene” is so contemporary it’s even programmed for the future. But more on that later.
Gerrard’s three new works displayed as projections, Dust Storm (Dalhart,Texas), Grow Finish Unit (near Elkhart, Kansas), and Oil Stick Work (Angelo Martinze/Richfield, Kansas), are seen one at a time, in chronological order, as you walk through the space. They are neither video nor film. They are what Gerrard calls “real time 3-D.” He constructs virtual scenes that unfold in real time using photographs and videos he takes while visiting the actual sites. “The real time is first the fact that they’re anchored to the actual time zone, there’s an entire day, a 24 hour cycle. Secondly, there’s also a 365 day year, so when you do come in and see the stars and the sky it is the constellation of that day,” said curator Jasper Sharp in a recent telephone conversation. On view in Venice, visitors will see the time, angle of the sun, nighttime sky, etc. that is actually occurring in Texas or Kansas. Real time 3-D is a technology Gerrard developed while taking part in a residency at Arts Electronica in Linz. The result leaves the viewer wondering what they’re actually seeing, if it’s real or digital. I would compare it to really good CGI effects.
The first projection you’ll find is Dust Storm (Dalhart, Texas) (2007). It is based on a photograph of a dust storm that took place in Texas in 1995 during the American Dust Bowl. Gerrard came across the photograph in 2006 while researching climatic formations like clouds. He visited the location in Texas scrawled across the back of the photograph where the storm took place and mapped it using video and photos. There is no film of the Dust Bowl storms of the thirties and forties so Gerrard based the moving storm off of footage from a sand storm in Iraq that ripped through an American military base. The resulting animation rotates continually 360 degrees on one spot, allowing the viewer to take in this colossal, billowing, churning storm that is fast approaching. One feels constantly on the verge of being engulfed by the frothing dust cloud, an anxiety amplified by the continual spin of the camera. “It’s a constant sort of imminence, just behind your shoulder or right in front of your face, filling the entire scene. It’s constantly rumbling on, night and day, but never actually gets to you,” said Sharp.
John Gerrard, "Grow Finish Unit (near Elkhart, Kansas)" (2008).
The second projection Grow Finish Unit (near Elkhart, Kansas) (2008) has a similar cyclical feeling, but with a more visible development over time. On his drive back from the dust storm location in Texas, Gerrard came across the setting for this particular scene, an unmanned pig farm. Apparently there are thousands of similar pig production facilities in the Great Southern Plains currently in operation. In Grow Finish Unit, a truck pulls up once every month, to take away the “finished piggies” and unload new piglets. “And the whole cycle starts again. It is constantly reinventing itself,” said Sharp.
Finally we arrive at the third animation, Oil Stick Work (Angelo Martinze/Richfield, Kansas) (2008), where Angelo Martinez arrives every day at dawn to paint an aluminum corn silo using a black oil stick. Leaving at dusk each day and working a six-day workweek, Angelo will finish his mind-numbingly tedious job (completely painting the silo black) in 30 years from the start date – 2008. Gerrard has programmed this particular animation to continue into 2038, when the image of the silo against the epic horizon of the Great Plains will become mere negative space. But the animation doesn’t end there, “The work will still exist and just gently orbit as a black void is cut out of the landscape,” said Sharp.
These three real-time, 3-D animations take us from past (dust bowl-era), to present (farming piggies), and into the future (poor Angelo!). The through line for this particular body of work is humans’ interaction with the environment, particularly the role and effect of oil in agro-industries. “In the storm, there’s man sort of harnessing oil with the invention of the combustion engine and the use of tractor for the first time to farm land. And they just farmed the hell out of this landscape and destroyed the topsoil, which enabled these dreadful dust storms that lasted for 10 or 12 years,” said Sharp. “Then you have these pigs that are fed on oil-derived feed, and of course you have Angelo who’s physically painting this building with oil.” And again, the silo will be covered in the black oil stick in by 2038, which is coincidentally (or not) the approximate date when the world’s oil will is predicted to run out.
While Daniel Birnbaum’s “Making Worlds” was full of conceptually driven pieces and engaging installations, many of the works (there were of course exceptions) failed to engage with contemporary issues and subsequently lacked content. Gerrard, with his mastery of advanced virtual technologies and utilization of striking, vast, and culturally relevant landscapes, is in stark contrast to the main exhibition halls (and frankly most of the national pavilions). The content is also unobtrusive. “The work is not something which is overly didactic, not something that is being forced down visitors’ throats when they arrive at the exhibition. There are all sorts of readings of the work,” said Sharp.
And while I laud his use of computer animation, it is pleasantly subdued. The projects are not overtly a derivative of digital programming at first glance. We’ve aired our disappointment in the lack of computer generated and digital material at this year’s biennale previously and Gerrard’s engagement with technology is a welcome exception. “Animated Scene” starts with a photograph in the thirties – photography being a new technology then. And it ends with a real-time 3D animation which projects into the future – a similarly new technology today. Photography is no longer the paradigm-shifting technology it was then, just as in 2038 Gerrard’s technique will be a thing of the past. I’m excited to see that comparison thirty years down the road and hope the biennales of the future embrace it appropriately.
John Gerrard, "Oil Stick Work (Angelo Martinze/Richfield, Kansas)" (2008).
