Sky Hopinka

The Land Describes Itself –

over and over again, never repeating, never stuttering, never faltering in the language it uses to convey meaning and meaninglessness.  Our interpretation of that voice and that presence is contingent on our thoughts and from where our meaning draws meanings. How do we hear and see something so grounded in our own sense of history? Usually by defining ourselves in place of these spaces.  

The photos, are photos of photos from landscapes around the Pacific Northwest, the western Southwest, and the Great Lakes. Homelands of me and many different peoples, containing histories of many more.  Projected 35mm transfers on transparencies illuminated by an Eiko overhead projector and photographed once more via digital camera.  Their construction was guided by a desire to remove the intelligibility of a topography and the weighted memory of that production. Not the memory entirely, I’ve got nothing against nostalgia, but to create remembrance without longing or desire. An accretive scene so far removed from the place that was photographed, where the texts etched into the image are as hypothetical as they are hesitantly descriptive.

I’ve often had a difficult time in understanding my relationship to landscapes. I could never pinpoint why.  These moving and static images attempt to stumble through that difficulty and uncertainty, with a shape given form by this poem from Franklin KR Cline, from his book–

SO WHAT

i’m trying
to avoid
this dangerous culture
of want

mercury it seems is always
in retrograde

it’s all getting jumbled

meanwhile i’m telling someone
i don’t remember

if they asked or not

about pastoral poetry it describes the land without calling it stolen

generally speaking

anyway
why write poems about the land

it describes itself 

*So What by Franklin KR Cline can be found here*

Series 1
For information on prints, contact The Green Gallery
info@thegreengallery.biz

Series 2
For information on prints, contact The Green Gallery
info@thegreengallery.biz