BENT TIME

A round translucent screen, an inflated weather balloon provides another form for activating the audience. To see the film spectators move around and under the screen. The audience movement creates multiple viewpoints as the image curves and bends.

Scientists have noted that light rays curve at the outer edges of the universe leading them to theorize that time also bends. A one-point perspective visual path across the US beginning inside a linear accelerator – or atom-smashing device – and traveling to such high-energy locations as the home of an ancient sun calendar in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; the site of Ohio Valley Mound cultures; the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges; and beyond. I was privileged to be able to film the first known calendar in North America dated from 9-13th century A.D. and hidden behind three rock plinths on the top of Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon. A large flat-faced rock was inscribed with nine large concentric circles that were split each year by the sun’s rays on summer solstice, June 21rst. Time bends in many ways.

Inspired by this idea, I used an extreme wide angle lens of 9mm and “one frame of film per foot of physical space” to simulate the concept of time bending.   The soundtrack is “Rattlesnake Mountain”, an original score by Pauline Oliveros.

*Preservation of this film was made possible by a grant from the Women’s Film Preservation Fund of New York Women in Film & Television.