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One is always crossing the horizon yet it always remains
distant. In this line where sky meets earth, objects cease to
exist... Since the car was at all times onsome left-over horizon,
one might say that the car was imprisoned in a line, a line that is
in no way linear.. the distance seemed to put restrictions on all
forward movement, thus bringing the car to a countless series of
standstills.
- Robert Smithson
Some people like to believe in a lot of nonsense. A road is
a road...
- Springrock, NM resident, Verona Watts, responding in the Salt
Lake Tribune (07/30/03) to the news that, thanks to negative
PR generated by the Book of Revelations, Hwy 666 linking Gallup, NM
to Monticello, UT is about to be renamed Hwy 491
... is a road...
PREAMBLE (HEAD)
While I was an actor in the five-day road-trip piece documented
below I played no
part either in choosing the destinations, planning the route or
operating the vehicle.
the road-trip piece was composed, choreographed and directed by JB
as a 'film-with-
no-film' commissioned by Afterall for the purposes of this
documentation
(with gas, motel and restaurant receipts retained for
reimbursement). The intent
was for JB to structure an experience framed by an itinerary
linking sites that
feature in a number of his works. The piece would be orchestrated
in such a
way as to expose, through mimesis, JB's working methods, focal
concerns and
the 'driven' quality of his attachment both to place and to
independent 16mm
filmmaking. Reeling in Utah thus reverses the
road-loop-to-film-spool
sequence established in North on Evers (1991). Whereas the latter
work
consists of
