Private Project

Ventilate

As the hallucinatory conclusion to the Air trilogy, Ventilate (2023–25) descends into a surreal, slightly psychedelic exploration of the invisible currents that sustain and threaten us. In this final movement of the Elemental Studies series, the atmosphere is no longer a passive void but a pressurized, shifting character, rendered in a spectral range of grays that strip the work of any terrestrial timeline. The film functions as a non-narrative fever dream, where the "broken overlap" between elemental air and climatic instability creates a visual language of distortion and transcendence.

The visual’s monochromatic "trip" is catalyzed by the avant-garde sonic architecture of Das Synthetische Mischgewebe (France). Their score acts as a sensory disruptor, weaving a complex, industrial-organic tapestry that mirrors the film's psychedelic drift. By abstracting the very breath of the planet into a series of rhythmic, surrealist ruptures, Ventilate forces a confrontation with the "otherness" of our environment. It is a haunting, cinematic meditation on a world gasping for balance—a pixelated mantra where the only constant is the flux of the unseen.

  • TJ Norris
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Music Video, Short
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 12 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 27, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - TJ Norris

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’ work explores various social complexities and stigmas around gender, the built environment, loss, and even society's love affair/disconnect between humankind and technology. These are only a few conceptual metrics expressed through a filter of wabi-sabi and/or the result of chance (ie. 'the exquisite corpse'). 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.

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Director Statement

My creative practice is a synesthetic pursuit that deliberately dissolves the borders between clinical observation and allegorical dreamscape. I operate as 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—symbolizing expansion, stability, rebirth, and adaptation—the impact of the Industrial Revolution and escalating climate change has stressed them into states of violent unpredictability. In these non-narrative meditations, the elements shapeshift into their modern, fearsome counterparts: the tornado, the quake, the forest fire, and the flood.

The series often ventures into the surreal and the psychedelic, particularly in its treatment of the invisible and the atmospheric. The visual language drifts into hallucinatory territories, where the "broken overlap" of natural forces creates a sensory distortion that transcends traditional time and place. Rendered in stark black and white to strip away historical markers, the work serves as a monochrome mantra—a necessary, slightly feverish 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, offering a grainy, spectral record of a fragile ecosystem in transition.