A silent 16mm film shot in Nebraska during the total solar eclipse in 2017. The work was shot on film to capture this light-based phenomenon on a light reactive medium, as opposed to on digital video. Meditating on the metaphysical, in the work we observe the slow alignment of the moon eclipsing the sun, super-imposed onto the open landscape where it was shot. Wind, insects and plants all become active receptors for this phenomenological shift from mid-day to mid-night, as the sun transforms from a primary source of life into a fugitive void.

Untitled for Technically Sweet was originally inspired by the Antonioni script of the same title for an exhibition curated by Yvette Brackman and Maria Finn and shown at Participant Inc. NYC, and Overgaden-Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. Under the subconscious yet ever-present glow of real and psychic catastrophic events lies something even more terrifying—the natural world and its utter indifference. This two-channel video installation pits catalog-perfect natural settings with the potential for environmental devastation.

A vision of our brother Deer.

Both Vermont Landscape and Pond Life followed two opera collaborations with composer Steve Reich. The operas were a new genre called a Theater of Ideas, which said a great deal about the world cultures in which we all live. In contrast, these two small works are quiet, with no words.

Water and wind are friction forces that continuously erode and shape landscapes, and the record of their effects is left behind on Earth’s terrain. As Laurie travels to the Monahans Sandhills in West Texas, a tornado threatens and leaves her vulnerable in a place with limited refuge, but she finds a modest motel made of cinderblock to wait out the storm. Desert images are contrasted with images of rain falling on roofs adjacent to the Electron Movers studio at 128 N.

Through the floating garden, into the mountain of signs and chants, arise the path of the winged stone. A stone that used to be a fossil.

A silent film portraying winter across three continents.

A young man recovering from emotional wounds, defiantly re-enters the outside world that welcomes his return with all its abundant miracles.

Audio-visual recordings of zoo-animals are woven into a fine web of actions and reactions, that finally spiral into a collective animalistic concert. Relating the different animals to each other through montage, fictional relations amongst them is created; a society of animals. The film thus comments on human communities, who created zoos as mirror images. There is an otherness there, and at the same time a disturbing proximity, which we’d like to dismiss.

Written, directed and edited by: Ann Oren 
Sound: Robert Hefter