The Great Basin! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Desert

The Great Basin! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Desert is a film, book and print project that addresses climate change, the severe drought in the Western United States, gun culture, the military’s use of the basin and range of Nevada for atomic testing, cultural stereotypes, my own personal history, and my experiences in this mostly remote area. In the 15 minute short film I am creating complex collages of my still and motion captures made in Nevada with appropriated short clips from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, recent weather footage, The Lone Ranger, as well as John Wayne’s and other historic films, cartoons, and many other cultural artifacts, in order to speak to the place and its significance.

Bruce Conner’s short films are very much informing my current work. Starting with his first film A Movie (1958), Conner appropriated found footage and montaged disparate imagery in order to speak about current culture and events, including the Cold War. Dara Birnbaum’s Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978), a re-edit of television’s Wonder Woman footage, and Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010), which consists of over 12,000 appropriated clips from the history of cinema, are also inspirations. Stanley Kubrick’s work is of course an important reference and influence.

The book component of The Great Basin! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Desert project references Pocket Western Pulp Fiction books from the 1940s and 1950s, appropriating their design. The inside pages collage stills and text derived from the film. The book also includes the short story “And You Come Across The Basin Alone”, that I have written under a nom de plume.