Heavy Weather Or Not

Still Images from "The Road to Mount Weather" -- See Selection of Video Online
Three-Channel Moving Image Installation/Projection, Stereo Sound, 15 minute loop/Dimensions Variable, 2006

Cliff Evans is a nice young man with a fertile imagination and a liquid capacity for ominous visual storytelling. Coupled with the endless options for digital appropriation, manipulation, and conspiracy theories available on the Internet, he has produced "The Road to Mount Weather," an epic three channel video hallucination/dream/cartoon/nightmare about the government agenda to control the populace from an underground bunker once life above ground becomes too toxic or demented. Those left up in the cold will be blinded by the media and not realize the truth. Obviously, this is already happening. While not willing to completely commit to being conspiracy minded, he speaks knowledgeably about Mount Weather, describing it as a training facility and bomb shelter for the executive branch, located in West Virginia. He can also allude to conspiracy theories, martial law, and Rex 84, a civil unrest containment exercise in the 1970's that continues to spark paranoia in civil libertarians. But overall, the sound and imagery are more satirical than frightening, acting as a sort of fun house mirror of our culture, our government, and our self-absorption.

A scratch-the-surface, stream-of-media-transcription of the work's layered and sequential imagery:

Your future starts here, drive-in, rockets, halo people in city, planes, smoke, bombs, destruction, Dorothy & yellow brick road trio, refugees, trailers, FEMA, spraying down people, press wearing 3D goggles while blinded to decimation, shooting, birds flying away, football players, canyons, corporate logos, stadium, screaming, cheering, clapping, beatific faces, nude female riot cops, destruction, blank sign holders, soldiers, blue eyed child getting eye scanned, mood change, halo, stewardess, devil, church, tree tops and cell towers, elephant, mat chem warriors, bombers, paisley, tires, bunkers, business men with machine legs, balloons on penis daisy (?), pretty couple, haloed, descends below ground, machines, video monitors, command center, watching, staging media, water park, White House, temples, satellite dishes, U.S. seal, Roman senate, fat women, chickens, banquet tables, butt heads, smiling royalty, devil cupid babies, fly by Reagan with dove.

Whew. As you can see, it covers a lot of bases. Evans spent a year and a half building the piece in PhotoShop and AfterEffects and has been exhibiting it in various settings since 2006. Available for purchase for $25,000, two of the edition have already sold. Technically, although it appears film-like, it is a collection of still images that are rendered in 2D, and sequenced for display in real time. Evans reports that 99.5% of the images are acquired off the Internet, and in his artist's statement elaborates:

"I immersed myself in image-gathering and reconstruction, allowing obsessions and paranoiac deviations to bring in tangential elements. At times, believing myself to be a co-conspirator with the powers presented, I abused my access to information, assimilating data from unknown persons' databases of images and photographs, rending subjects from their context and converting their initial intent or purpose towards my own ends. At other times, I found myself becoming a paranoid heretic attempting to subvert the powers of control, yet under suspicion, fearful of being tracked, monitored, and forced in directions that were beyond my knowledge or will. [...] However much a slippery slope, my intent is not to propagate such emotions, but to bring them closer to a singularity of absurdity, reversing the fear and anxiety towards a (albeit limited) sense of control with a sense of humor.

While much of the imagery is funny, satirical, and plain bent, he confesses that the subject matter of the project did bring him down at times. So it was nice to see that he let himself out of the bunker for awhile to come with his project to Scope Miami this week with his gallery, Curator's Office.