disparate bodies

Jason Lanka

artist

disparate bodies

Video Still

Absence and presence play a major role within my work. My explorations are based upon a response to an absence or an outside presence within a specific landscape. I have chosen to use the term “outside”, as I am describing something having an affect on the landscape and creating a disturbance that I feel. I am avoiding terminology like “unnatural” to describe the presence because “nature”, as William Cronon has stated in his book Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature ," is not very natural, if by nature we mean that which is untouched by humans; instead, nature is a profoundly human construction. Not only have wilderness areas been significantly affected by humans, but our very notions of nature have shifted through time in response to changing psychological, sociological, and religious beliefs."
No other species on the planet now or since has had the physical power to be able reshape the landscape as we have. In our ever-growing desire to continually advance our global industries, we are manipulating the surface of this planet at an ever-increasing rate. Yet, do we truly consider that the marks we “draw” on the earth will outlast our lifetime, our culture and our current political boundaries? The Mountain West is filled with the intaglio drawings of cultures thousands of years old. Their imprint, minuscule compared to ours, is still very much present in the landscape. Crisscrossing the country several times from the Eastern seaboard to the Mountain West, I have continually found myself more and more aware of the drawn marks left in the land by our roads, irrigation, and wheel traffic. Like the Nazca Lines in Peru or the irrigation canals of the Chaco Culture left over 1000 years ago, will generations after us use the marks we leave in the surface of our world as a method of understanding our culture? When they do this, what then will the marks we have made communicate about us?

Disparate Bodies

I spend weekends and holidays out in the woods, on the wind swept plains of my birthplace, or in the mountains where I grew up, and yet I realize that my physical and psychological contact with my environs becomes more tenuous every year.

My cell phone, my flat screen TV, a constant wireless connection, a computer; these devices form the foundation for my connection with our western society and yet they consume more electrical resources every year. Like a cataract, these devises increase the opacity of the screen through which I view my altered landscape.

Am I conscious of my impact and my place in my environment?

Do I pretend to sit in the land, but in actuality, I am on the land?

Disparate Bodies is a piece exploring the growing disconnect my generation has with our environment. At a time where “the environment” is vogue politically, socially, and economically, environmentalism seems less a state of consciousness and more a film that when added makes it easier to consume.

A figure on the landscape, separated by space and form

The work was filmed on the high plains of North Dakota. The final installation of the work will consist of a video documenting the performance and the installation of the chair and finger apparatus.

WATCH VIDEO: Use the link connected to this page or

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jDRur07epQ

I would like the express my sincere gratitude to Kyle Pherson. I could not have created this piece without his help. My thanks

Disparate Bodies