Stemple Pass

Saturday, May 25, 2013
5:00 PM

 

Four landscape shots containing a painstakingly constructed replica of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, one shot per season. On the soundtrack, filmmaker James Benning reads extracts from Kaczynski’s journals from the early 1970s; two notebooks written in numerical code in 1985 and decoded by Benning in 2011; two excerpts from the 35,000 word Industrial Society and Its Future by “FC” (aka the Unabomber Manifesto) as published in The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995; and a 2001 interview with Kaczynski by J. Alienus Rychalski, special correspondent for the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch.

“A wooded mountain range. On the lower right, half-hidden by a tree, a wood cabin. In the distance the dip of the ridge connecting two peaks. One landscape. Four images. Four seasons. Spring, fall, winter, summer.

Each image inviting a contemplation of the same space. The voice of the artist, James Benning, reading extracts from the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. On hunting, solitude, nature, anger, plans for murder, acts of destruction. He laments the impossibility of solitude in a technological world, extols the plenitudes of nature, lambasts the moral order which refuses him his freedom. After a few brief texts, a contemplation of the stillness of the image without voice. Rain drizzles, a snowflake falls, smoke curls, a cloud shifts, the light dims.

The time, the stillness, the lack, all sharpen the hearing, challenge the sight, invite the mind to wander. The forest is less still than it first seemed – two birds flit across the screen, a tree wavers, a wisp of smoke rises. We hear the echoes of shots, the rumble of an engine, the skittering of paws. ” — retinalechoes.com