"That Morning We Were Forgetting Ghosts"

two one-night audio/video installations (2005)

I arrived to work in downtown Pittsburgh one morning to find that two white-tailed deer had just run through the morning traffic in a panic. The frightened animals had somehow made their way into the heart of the city, and caused a ripple in the early morning routine of cars and pedestrians. I never actually saw any of it, but the idea of those animals and the unfortunate (albeit imagined) implications for these deer had a lasting effect on my day. These two videos emerged as different versions of the story, and appeared as brief narratives during two separate one-night-only exhibitions.

The first video (03:30), on the right, was filmed using a small pinhole surveillance camera, which was mounted to the top of an extendable pole which I then walked around my immediate neighborhood with one night as it snowed. The audio narration is of me describing the aforementioned scenario as through a journal. The piece was installed in an old janitor's closet in a warehouse in Nashville for an exhibit in the Secret Show Series - the video was visible through a small glass peephole, mounted in the center of a drawing, while the audio was played on nearby headphones (see below).

The second video (02:55), on the left, was shot with a handheld digital video camera in downtown Pittsburgh, on the block where my coworker, Thad Kellstadt, saw the frantic deer. The narration is an ad-lib by Thad, based on his memory of the incident. The piece was installed in a storage room in a small warehouse in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. It was part of the Joyce to the World benefit series curated by Tom Weinrich.