Dreaming of the Tender Earth - Nevada Residency

Performed at the Morris Stanford Foundation, Las Vegas.

This work was made during a visit to Nevada during January 2024. It is a visual and sonic meditation on the delicate balance of the eco-system of the desert, the impending crisis of water due to unchecked consumption, underpinned by the ever-present threat of the consequences of human invention. Footage of the environment and flora of the desert are woven between glimpses of the Hoover Dam, the Las Vegas Strip, and fragments of a public information film, Duck and Cover, made in the USA at the height of the Cold War.

The use of 16mm cine film requires a very tactile and physical approach to the acts of filming, processing, editing and screening. The physicality and delicacy of the medium is emphasised by the visible marks of wear brought about by repeated cycling through a film projector. Combined with an interpretation of Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender, performed on electric guitar with an ancient valve amplifier, the work evokes a sense of dream-world referring to the essential need to handle our environment with care.

The intended structure for the work was a performed cinematic/sound/music work. This would combine a very loop of cine film (in the order of 200 feet or so). The film would be threaded through the strings of an amplified electric guitar upon which I would attempt to play Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender, the title of which also leant itself to the theme and title of the work. The performance would involved the audience gently holding the film, tenderly caring for it as it cycled through the projector.

The work was performed with success if rather curtailed by the film breaking after a around four minutes. However, it this fragility of the film that is so resonant and symbolic of our impact on our environment. The sense of risk, chance and loss of agency, is intrinsic to my conception and delivery of this work and use of media.

The work extends my research into ‘cranky media.’ This being the use of physical media that is, by its physical qualities, delicate, prone to damage, wear, failure, and unpredictable behaviour. The sense in which the media pronounces its own agency through the outcomes of process and experience of performance is a central theme of current research.