Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Spiral Jetty

In the near ending part of the film it shows Robert Smithson running starts from the edge of spiral to the center. When he stops at the central dot the camera from the helicopter zoom further and further. The shape of spiral becomes more and more visible. This is the most striking moment in the film for me but it perplexed me as well that the intention for this movement.
After I read the text about Robert Smithson and his work as land art I have built up my interpretation of this scene. The essential goal of land art is to treat a landscape as an artwork, likewise to make people see artwork as close like the nature. However, the nature has its characteristic of solitariness, which even makes the artist himself feel the inaccessibility. In this scene the artist is shot gradually minor, until surrounded by he black lava. The sense of solitary, depress, flow and stillness is presented and thus, PERHAPS to support his question towards it.
However, at the same time I found this quote from an article in R.S’s official website:

"No ideas, no concepts, no systems, no
structures, no abstractions could hold themselves together in the actuality
of that evidence"

the other way to make site transform into nonsite is: to get a tatoo one one's skin:p

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