Pyramids and Parabolas II
16mm transferred to HD video
2021
Pyramids and Parabolas explores our relationship to the natural world by examining how we communicate with the unknown universe through geometric structures.
The idea of an infinite film series allows each episode to take on a looseness and autonomy in order to experiment freely with the serial form. From collage, to essayist, to abstract, each installment of the series assumes a different genre, which can be independent of the others. The episodes all-together form a total work of art with a common theme and interconnected narrative threads. As the series unfolds, Pyramids and Parabolas will shape shift and take on a life of its own. New ideas and formal experiments may emerge from the openness of the film form that is not predetermined.
The first episode established the groundwork for the dialectic between the pyramidal structure of ancient monolithic architecture and the parabolic shape of modern radio telescopes. Featuring found dash-cam footage of the apocalyptic fireball that came crashing down from outer space into Chelyabinsk, Russia, Pyramids and Parabolas started with a bang that signaled our precarity in the cosmos as a vulnerable planet amidst powerful natural forces. Our relationship to nature is not just what is on Earth; we live in a nature that is largely inhospitable to humans and other living organisms.
Calling attention to the body in order to foreground the experiential aspect of the film, the second episode of Pyramids and Parabolas begins with a three-minute body scan meditation in the dark. Followed by a quote from the Three Body Problem, “Three days from now, between one and five in the morning, the entire universe will flicker for you” — which acts almost like a spell, the film is a travelogue of the artist journeying through surreal and sublime landscapes in nature. Bookended by the building of a NASA JOVE radio telescope in Twentynine Palms, California, the collage film is the artist’s quest to touch the cosmos and connect with the universe through flesh.
https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/202106/alice-wang-85839
