The Bright Passage
PRESENTED BY MAGNAN METZ GALLERY
JANUARY 13 - FEBRUARY 18, 2006
This project weaves together factual documentation of the former occupants of Mill Rock Island and related historical obscurities in an installation environment constructed with drawings, maps, objects, and a fictional documentary video comprised of interviews with both homeless and well-to-do professionals, asked to imagine contemporary scenarios about a non-existent group of people inhabiting the island.
Several interviews attempt to define the former inhabitants and their artifacts in an effort to substantiate them. The narrative gradually declines from the conceivable to the absurd. The indigenous group is subjected to colonial exotification and taxonomy. The Bright Passage draws attention to the embellished line between history and myth, and to the loss of the individual within the collective construction of history – the importance of oral histories against the purist approaches of power.
