Monument Valley

2002

Digital Video

12 minutes

​

​

​

​

In Monument Valley a continuous shot slowly tracks through a vast and saturated mars-like landscape in Arizona.  Concurrently, a belligerent radio discussion from across the Utah border between two people unfolds and gradually reveals itself as insidious and politically extreme.

 

The slow pace of the moving image is mesmerising and unreal, whilst the ambiguous conversation constantly feels threatening and obscure creating an unsettling contrast between the disjointed image and narrative dialogue.  Against a serene and baron landscape, we are in fact transported into a highly politicised and aggressive space revealing cross-border politics working in tandem with loaded backdrops associated with The Western and past massacres of indigenous people.

 

This combination in fact presents a strange space, one in which everything sits in harmony. It is exactly this hanging sense of comfort that requires further investigation and which persistently disturbs and forces us to question the landscape and the power of the image.