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Freitag, 24. Oktober 2008, 21:15 Uhr

Achim Mohné

"The Lemay Island Remote Location Project" (2005)
"The Backspace of America" (2008, work in progress copy)

Die Filme sind bei YouTube unter folgenden Links abrufbar:

The Lemay Island Remote Location Project
The Backspace of America

"The Lemay Island Remote Location Project" (2005)

The Lemay Island Remote Location was purchased by Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt in 1969. The 40-acre stretch of land is 42 miles away from any kind of infrastructural facilities. A 35-mile bumpy track takes you there, the last 12 miles of which must be found with the help of the GPS navigation system. On 12 June 2005 the permanent and energy-autarchic “Land-Media-Sculpture” on Lemay Island was switched on. The light installation illuminates the surrounding countryside 24 hours, seven days a week. It consists of an LED spot light (18 watt, 6-degree angle beam), two 24 volt batteries (220 ampere), a wind generator (400 watt/hour) and two solar modules (each 32 watt/peak) in a format of 100 x 65 cm.
The solar modules serve to generate electricity and, at the same time, as a “panel painting” that reflects the surrounding countryside: the Newfoundland Evaporation Basin and the Silver Mountains. The viewer sees him/herself mirrored against the plain of the salt flats. The solar modules have been installed very high up and horizontally. A wind turbine generates additional electricity. This occurs specifically by means of meteorologically conditioned winds that spring up almost daily after sunset. (If the winds reach a hurricane-like force of over 90 m.p.h., the turbine is halted by an uncoupling of the rotor.) Sun and wind energy thus complement each other in the cycles of day/night and summer/winter. The batteries buffer the energy for at least 5 days. In this way energy provision is guaranteed even in the unlikely case of heavy cloud cover occurring simultaneously with absolute wind stillness. The LED spotlight was modified to withstand the extreme climate conditions at hand. It is very bright and visible far and wide, even during the midday hours of sun.

The beam’s very slim 6-degree angle of reflection means that it illuminates only a narrow corridor of the valley and the salt flats.

The brightness within this corridor of light corresponds to the light intensity of a full moon night. The countryside outside of this corridor remains unlit. As a result, outside the margins of the beam no “light pollution” takes place. There are thus no limitations for observing the starry sky and the Milky Way.
Even from miles away, viewed say from the salt flats, the installation is only visible in the specified angle of the light beam. But within this angle, the LED enables visitors to take their bearings for miles.

"The Backspace of America" (2008, work in progress copy)

Semi-documentary, 45 Minutes, Mini-DV A Video tour through Wendover with Matt Coolidge, director of The Center for Land Use Interpretation. Wendover is a small town on the edge of the the salt flats of Great Salt Lake Desert of Utah, a remote region that is intensely industrialized. The state line bisects Wendover, creating two distinct halves: the gambling boom town of Nevada's Wendover, and the stagnated Utah half, dominated by the cluttered remains of the Airbase. The land around Wendover is bombed, strafed, and dusted with chemical and biological agents. Military operations continue in the surrounding three million acres of restricted-access lands. Large-scale industries remove salt, and process minerals from the flats, and copper and gold are extracted from giant pits in the mountains. Hazardous waste facilities and obsolete chemical weapons have found refuge in the remote, nearly uninhabitable landscape. “The Backspace Of America” documents the human interpretation of the land in the region around Wendover, focusing on The Great Basin as a ‘backspace of America.’ The video is a rough-edited documentary that reveals the clashing aspects of the region’s life: The History of the Enola Gay Project (caring the atomic weapons to Japan); self sufficient BBQ parties on a still partially active military base; an artist’s project featuring a gps-enabled three-wheel bike; a target museum; Wendover Airfield as a Hollywood set; car races along the atomic bomb loading pit; rock concerts in the Enola Gay airplane hangar; problems of land management; Skull Valley’s Goshute Indians; and the worlds largest radioactive dumpsite.

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