Archive Post-Landscape: Between Nature and Culture

Curator's Essay | Images from the Exhibition | Kim Abeles Sandow Birk | Laurie Brown | Elizabeth Bryant The Center for Land Use Interpretation | Wanda Hammerbeck Andreas Hessing | Sant Khalsa | Skeet McAuley Kathryn Miller | Diana Thater | Post-Landscape Home Page Archive - Fall 2001 Home

Diana Thater

The best animals are the flat animals—the best space is the deep space is a project that reaches, through the imagery, shooting style, and choice of media, editing, and, finally, installation, into the gap that exists between the illusionary depth of the image and the real surface of the screen. All of the things that make up the work—those who are depicted (objects); how they relate to their space (the field); how the image of them relates to our space (real space); and those who watch (subjects)—are made equivalent.

The best animals are the flat animals—the best space is the deep space is a collection of eight works for installation that comprise 27 different parts. Each work uses a different grouping and configuration from among the pieces. All eight works were shot both in film and video and are made for projection and monitors. The work is intended to be arranged and rearranged out of its many separate parts in different spaces in different cities simultaneously.

This exhibition included The best outside is the inside, one of eight parts of The best animals are the flat animals—the best space is the deep space. It is a separate tableau shot at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. The work was made in two parts: During the day the scene was shot with filters as “day for night,” and then it was shot again at night with bright lights as “night for day.” Here there is no single object at which we are asked to direct our gaze; the empty space itself—the landscape—is the object. The viewer watches the crew, who in turn watch the well-lit space. If the shot were framed more tightly, we would mistake the daytime forest for night, but it is so widely framed that we see the sunlit sky. In the night shot, if the camera were to zoom in, it would appear to be broad daylight for a space of five or six feet, but, again, too much of the forest is in the shot; the dark tops of the trees are visible, and the image falls off into complete darkness at the edges of the frame. Two shots were made simultaneously in 35mm film and in video: The film records the forest alone, and the video records the crew watching the film being shot. The two are edited separately and are played on separate monitors. In this piece a confusion about time, as opposed to space, is the objective. The forest is a background, not for a living being, but for the most ephemeral of things: visible time.