Burning Bush
2005
HD video
5 hr loop
HD video
5 hr loop
Burning Bush is a five-hour static shot of fake electric
fires rigged onto a desert sage bush—the running time
determined by the opening hours of the gallery where it was to be shown, so that viewers would never see the
looping point. The video begins at dawn and continues until noon, its audio the ambient sounds of the filming location: crickets, birds, wind.
Burning Bush is meant to disrupt the way viewers consume video. Often, when one arrives at the loop point in a work, one can consider the work “consumed” and can move on to the next. In this case what should obviously be a loop has been drawn out. Viewers wait for the repeat point but it never arrives, leaving only the bodily experience of watching and determining meaning, much like Moses in the biblical story upon which this work is based.
Burning Bush is meant to disrupt the way viewers consume video. Often, when one arrives at the loop point in a work, one can consider the work “consumed” and can move on to the next. In this case what should obviously be a loop has been drawn out. Viewers wait for the repeat point but it never arrives, leaving only the bodily experience of watching and determining meaning, much like Moses in the biblical story upon which this work is based.
Making Burning Bush took three different attempts over three years; lightning strikes, torrential downpours, a rancher divebombing us with an airplane, heat exhaustion, and generators running out of gas. The images showing this struggle have become part of the narrative of the work. I have used these stills in catalogs and invitations for the gallery installations.