Make a pilgrimage to Longmont to the Firehouse Arts Center to catch an evening screening of work by a CU Film Studies faculty-member Jeanne Liotta. I had met her the evening before at another university-sponsored cultural event. Alex had mentioned there was a reception/opening in the Rare Books Room of the Library, and, as a professional nomadic cultural participant (and observer), I thought I’d check it out. Turns out it was the effort of a Humanities class that had curated a small show of works from the collection of artist’s books that Lucy Lippard had given to the University. Strangely enough two of the pieces in the exhibition are from old friend/networker node, Paul Rutkovsky (aka. floridada). I talked to some of the student curators about Paul, Lucy, and about networking. I was lucky to have been doing my MFA at CU-Boulder when Lucy was in residence and received some of her teachings. Age brings the role of information carrier, holder of historical perspective and knowing, story-teller. No corner on wisdom, but at least some stories are related. I query the kids about what their thinking is about the use of photocopy machines as art tools. This is a very novel idea for them (given they only know the digital type of photocopy machines at most, not the old analog devices). Paper output is novel in itself. I don’t have much documentation online of some of the prior (ancien-régime!) photocopy-based projects I’ve run: just The Xerox Book that included mp3 files of the accompanying collaborative audio cassette mix, unfortunately there are no scans of the 300 actual pages … some day I’ll get to that corner of the archive & revive it in the digital zone.

At any rate, Jeanne’s work dances around cosmology, astronomy, and very much the syntax of the various filmic media she plays with — from Second Life pieces to found footage, analog and digital to Ray-o-gram-printed 35mm film stock. The sonic accompaniments well synergize with the visuals. I missed not seeing some of the analog film pieces in their original form (vs digital reproductions), as most of the pieces are (at least in part) deeply about what mediation they are conveyed upon. (Not that that aspect is meant to completely frame them materialistically: it’s only one order of correlation.) There are plenty of other resonant aspects and sources: the eclipse, the sky, the procession of stellar energies, the transposition of Light from various enigmatic sources onto halating film substrates: she always maintains an alchemical and, consequently, an experimental edge through her attention to immediate and spontaneous situation. This sensitivity is combined with an aware curiosity of phenomenon: yielding Light works that are simultaneously playful and yet connected to/suffused with an insistent and sometimes overwhelming gravity. Escaping the gravitational field of be-ing requires an empathy for the intense sadness that pervades our current times: this potential is achieved on occasion and reminded me of the intent of Bruce Elder’s magnum opus “The Book of All the Dead” and the constant struggle against the gravity of it all, in search of Light. It goes ever back to Simone Weil’s “Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.”