Infrared Ohio University Powerplant from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

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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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THE CRUDE AND THE RARE

October 19 to November 20, 2010
41 Cooper Gallery

Curated by Saskia Bos and Steven Lam

Opening Reception: Oct. 19, 2010, 6 to 9 pm
Open hours Tues – Sat. 11 am to 6 pm

Artists:
Marina Abramović, Bik Van der Pol, Mark Dion, Jimmie Durham, Grady Gerbracht, Alfredo Jaar, Sara Jordenö, Robert Kinmont, Jeff Lovett, Margaret Morton, Matt Mullican, Sophie Ristelhueber, Lonnie Van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, among others

Continuing the research on environmental justice started with the inaugural exhibition at 41 Cooper Gallery, Free as Air and Water, this exhibition will feature projects made in the past few decades that address the intersection between materiality, alchemy, and the politics of resource extraction.

Featuring a diverse group of artists that span from multiple generations and geographic areas, the exhibition includes projects that address the political economy of precious substances such as gold, diamonds, and oil. By investigating how matter has inspired creative processes and critique, The Crude and the Rare delves into the poesis of making, considering how physicality and the transformation of matter layer our understanding of the material world

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Coal A Bridge to the Future on Coal from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

Coal was the Wealth of a Nation Loop from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

A Little Soot Upon the Windowsill Loop from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

Solar Power Loop from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

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The following is documentation of a mock-up installation for a piece called: Nature Never Gives Up Anything Without a Fight. The loop is excerpted from the film: Coal: A Bridge to the Future

Nature Never Gives Up Anything Without a Fight (Installation) from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

Coal: Nature Never Gives Up Anything Without a Fight from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

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These images were taken on a recent tour of the Gavin Power Plant in Cheshire Ohio with Matthew Friday's art and ecology class.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The coal-fired Gavin Power Plant inCheshire, Ohio

General James M. Gavin Power Plant is a 2.6-Gigawatt coal-fired power station in Cheshire, Ohio, USA operated by American Electric Power. Named after James M. Gavin, it is the largest coal fired power facility in Ohio, and one of the largest in the nation. Its two units, rated at 1300 MWe each, were launched into service in 1974 and 1975.^[1]

The plant is located at 38°56′09″N 82°07′00″W
, just 2.5 km (1.6 mi) upstream along the Ohio River from a smaller, older coal-fired Kyger Creek Power Plant.

References

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"Nature never gives up anything without a fight. It's a continuous fight and a challenge for a person to operate a piece of equipment and to take from nature things that she has put there for you to use."

This sentiment echoes the sense of self-entitlement that is commonly described by extractive industries. The confidence that resources were placed on the earth for "us" to use neglects and in most cases supersedes the notion that it may not be wise to extract the resources in the first place.

In installation this piece is projected as a 16mm film loop onto a large piece of coal. The projection bleeds around the coal leaving an outline of the film on the wall with a coal shaped void in the center.

Coal: Nature Never Gives Up Anything Without a Fight from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

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Utilizing my “archival impulse”[1] I am continually and collaboratively developing a non-hierarchical archive of the region and its network of influences.  The archive serves as a point of access for the viewer and a point of departure for artistic productions that, when completed, are folded back into the archive from which they were inspired. Many of these artistic productions take the form of annotated photographic prints of scanned sites, video documentation of exploration through visual prosthetics, and augmentation of existing archival materials but the reincorporation of these into the archive inspires new combinations and paths of research.  This cyclical methodology of research and production facilitates an archive that is continually re-informed and reflexive.  is the presentation of a cross section of this archive.

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A Bridge to the Future from Jeff Lovett on Vimeo.

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