Current
As the second movement of the Water trilogy within the Elemental Studies series (2023–25), Current explores the fractured intersection of the natural elements and our destabilized climate. The film is a study in fluid tension, balancing cinematic subtlety with sudden, rhythmic ruptures. Entirely non-narrative and rendered in a spectrum of grayscale, the work occupies a temporal void—stripped of historical markers to better focus on the raw, shifting mechanics of the aquatic world.
The core of this piece lies in the singular pairing of light and vibration. In a series where each of the twelve films is defined by a unique international collaboration, Current finds its sonic heartbeat in the work of Massimo Toniutti (Italy). His score does not merely track the visual; it acts as a structural counterweight, translating the "broken overlap" of the elements into an immersive, auditory tide. This visceral marriage of monochrome optics and Italian experimentalism—available on Carpe Sonum Records—creates a meditative experience where sound and image are indistinguishable from the flow itself.
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TJ NorrisDirectorauto-porto-matic (1993), Infinitus (2008)
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Project Type:Experimental, Music Video, Short
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Runtime:4 minutes 53 seconds
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Completion Date:February 7, 2024
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Country of Origin:United States
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Black & White
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Digital Cinema Package:Unavailable
TJ Norris is an award-winning multidisciplinary conceptual artist based in Fort Worth, TX. He studied at Massachusetts College of Art and the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. Norris' film work has been sparse in the past but has included: a short titled 'auto-porto-matic' which was included in DCTV's Film Fest (1993, NYC) curated by Cheryl Dunye, and 'Infinitus' (2-Channel Installation, 72 mins, 2008) recipient of the Couture Grant (New American Art Union, OR).
Over the last decade his work has been included in the Red Dot Art Festival and Aqua Miami, as well as participation in art residencies with both Caldera (Oregon) and Kimmel Harding Nelson Art Center (Nebraska). Norris’ work has been reviewed in Art Ltd, Leonardo (MIT Press), Photographer’s Forum, The Oregonian, The Boston Globe and many other publications and has been featured in Tacoma Art Museum's 10th Northwest Biennial, A4 Art Museum (Chengdu, China), South Bend Museum of Art, Millepiani (Rome), CoCA Seattle, the Oregon Center on Photographic Art and many other institutions. His work explores the abstract psychology and social complexities of the urban environment. Examples of his work are held in various international private collections, as well as the Vanhaerents Art Collection (Brussels), Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fuller Museum of Art, the Museum de la Cuidad, Harvard University, Nike, and the RACC’s Visual Chronicle Collection. In 2018 Norris published his first monograph of photographic work titled ‘Shooting Blanks’ (2008-2013). Between the early 1990’s and 2013 he also spent years working as a freelance curator bringing shows to institutions as diverse as Tufts University Aidekman Art Center, SUNY/Binghamton Art Museum, Miller Fine Art Center, University of Oregon, Roland Dille Center for the Arts, Newspace Center for Photography, Boise State Visual Art Center and his own gallery/art space - Soundvision, among others.
My creative practice is a synesthetic pursuit that deliberately blurs the borders between clinical observation and allegorical dreamscape. I am a "collector of chaos," scavenging the socialized urban landscape for a sense of "otherness" that is often discarded by the casual passerby. In our post-pandemic reality, these films function as cinematic "exquisite corpses," where highly worked, overlapping imagery creates a visual puzzle of shapes and textures. By reclaiming a slow, attentive gaze—a faculty increasingly degraded by the era of instant, reductive media—I explore the haphazard "human remains" of our environment, treating the medium as a pixelated "Wild West" where the only constant is flux.
This exploration is anchored by The Elemental Imbalance, a robust interrogation of the four ancient pillars of our planet: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. While these forces traditionally represent the functional core of organic life, the impact of the Industrial Revolution and escalating climate change has stressed them into states of violent unpredictability. In these non-narrative meditations, I draw upon alchemical symbolism to frame this crisis: the volatile transformation of matter and the transmutation of the natural world into something unrecognizable. The elements shapeshift from their pure, foundational states into their fearsome modern counterparts—the tornado, the quake, the forest fire, and the flood—representing a dark alchemy where the "great work" of nature is being undone by human interference.
Rendered in stark black and white to strip away historical markers, the series serves as a surreal mantra—a necessary pause to witness the "checks and balances" of Mother Nature. Supported by an intense international collaborative score, the work captures the visceral tension between the peaceful and the savage. It is a cinematic study of a fragile ecosystem in transition, where the alchemical gold of our planet is being reduced to the soot and salt of a fractured horizon.