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Arjuna Neuman

Port 1: Lost in the Caesium Forest

Doc. expérimental | hdv | couleur | 11:35 | Canada, USA | 2013

Port 1 is the first chapter of Caesium Forest, an ongoing project that explores five different yet inter-connected relationships (ports) to technology. Each relation could be interpreted as a type of reverence?spiritual or scientific. The project starts with the atomic bomb in Wendover and traces out a space shuttle?s retirement, Christian techno-music as worship, TED Talks, and returns to the government nuclear facilities of Oakridge, TN. The goal is to bring these different yet inter-connected narratives together, to create a filmic ecosystem. In particular the project will draw its formal structure from the way radioactive tracers were used to identify the relationships across biota within a given ecosystem. In fact it was only through the radioactive contamination of the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge that provided the means for ecology to develop as we know it today. Port 1: Lost in the Caesium Forest begins this story in Wendover ? the former largest US airforce base and home to the Nagasaki and Hiroshima atomic missions. Port 1 assembles a dream like sequence in the ruined Utah/Nevada landscape, where World War 2 history becomes casino, becomes Hard Times Pawn Shop, becomes fireworks, becomes SWAT team forced entry, becomes a Christian rave ? all the while preparing us for the future.

Arjuna Neuman was born on an airplane, that?s why he has two passports. He is a filmmaker, writer and artist. He exhibits his work internationally including recent shows in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Switzerland and Germany. Recent exhibitions include ?ich bin naimah? at Seven Swans, Frankfurt; ?Arjuna Neuman? at the Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; and ?ABC ? Montreal? at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. His videos have been screened at Redcat Gallery, Culture Unplugged, Verge Gallery, Out the Window Festival, Video Row and Richmond Art Gallery. His writing has appeared in Art Voices, The Journal for New Writing and Into the Pines Press amongst others. He is the co-founder of the research gallery and collective ? Concord in Cypress Park, Los Angeles, where he lives, collaborates and works.