16mm Film: Gavin Power Plant and Essex Mine AMD

Gavin AMD from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

This is a digital transfer of a 16mm film.

This film was shot on Kodak Ektachrome 100D Color Reversal Film. The camera was a a Keystone Model A-9 circa. 1947.

This film was shot on August 25th 2010

Color reversal film is exposed and developed as a positive image. This means that when the film is screened, the light from the projector is passing through the same film that was on site and recorded the initial indexical projections from the subjects at the site.

The indexical record of the films presence at the site is developed through a series of eroding processes. As the final product is projected it is subjected to damage, with every viewing of the film information is exchanged index for index. The visual information that was "etched" on to the substrate of the film is lost and replaced by the information that illustrates the damaging history of viewing the film.

The processes of erosion and the records of damage that are embedded in the film echo those of the sites in the film. The Gavin Power Plant is a site of consumption and damage. Nine to Fourteen full sized river barges of coal are crushed to dust and combusted there every day. The plant, despite its scrubbers, emits sulfur dioxide (the chemical culprit of acid rain) in to the atmosphere. The poisons that the scrubbers do extract from the exhaust are merely packed into nearby valleys as a toxic sludge separated from the topsoil by a mere 6mil plastic sheet.

The Essex mine remediation facility is a record of mining that ceased nearly a hundred years ago. A process called robbing the pillar, where by miners remove the supports that keep a mine from collapsing, were practiced very often as mines in the 19^th century were depleted. This practice left the Essex mine susceptible to collapse. When a portion did give way a creek diverted into the abandoned mine shafts. As it flowed through and out of what used to be the miners' entrance it carried with it toxic chemicals stored in the raw surfaces of the interior. These toxins coat the creek in powered alumina (the white substance) and iron sulfide (the rusty colored sludge) and kill all the living organisms.

This film should be considered as raw material and a rough draft. I have several pieces in mind that will use the film that has been digitized and uploaded here.

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