Video by Three Suns Collective
Oil Jetty (Random Access Memory) is a sci-fi lyric of our exploration and pilgrimage to the Oil Jetty at Rozel Point, which inspired artist Robert Smithson to create his artwork Spiral Jetty. Our film is centered around the concept of content discovered within a time capsule from a dystopian landscape in the not too distant future, with a fragmentation of personal, ecological, and electronic memory. The included video clips were filmed during our road trip to the North Arm of the Great Salt Lake and are to be randomized and repeated when played alongside the narrative audio file. The audio is a kind of oral cento, composed of quotes from interviews that we conducted in the field, which have been woven together to create a narrative script.
The interviews (and source quotes) are from the following participants: Dr. Bonnie Baxter-Clark, Director of Great Salt Lake Institute, Westminster College Jaimi Butler, Coordinator at Great Salt Lake Institute, Westminster College Matthew Coolidge, Director, Center for Land Use Interpretation Tacita Dean, filmmaker and visual artist Gretchen Dietrich, Executive Director, Utah Museum of Fine Arts Lynn de Freitas, Executive Director, Friends of the Great Salt Lake Hikmet Loe, teacher, artist, art historian, author Chris Taylor, architect and Director of the Land Arts of the American West program at Texas Tech University Michael D. Vanden Berg, Energy and Minerals Program Manager, Senior Geologist, Utah Geological Survey Connor (Spiral Jetty Visitor) John (Spiral Jetty Visitor) Shane (Spiral Jetty Visitor).
Bio
Three Suns Collective grew out of our participation in the 2021 fieldwork session at the Land Arts of the American West through Texas Tech University’s College of Architecture. The members of Three Suns include: Christoffer Eide received his BFA in filmmaking from The International Film and Television School in Paris, France in 2006, an MFA in directing from Drama Centre London, Central Saint Martins in 2011, an MFA in Fine Art from Bergen Academy of Art and Design in Bergen, Norway in 2015, and a BSc in Landscape Construction and Management from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2021. Eide's work has screened at the Cinémathèque Française, Paris; the Curzon Soho in London and displayed at venues across Scandinavia, lastly at Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum as part of the touring exhibition Vestlandsutstillingen (The Westland Exhibition). He is currently living and working in Oslo, Norway. Meghan E. Giles received her PhD in English from Texas Tech University and MFA in creative writing from McNeese State University. Her poetry has appeared in Cimarron Review, South Dakota Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Measure, and elsewhere. She currently lives in her home state of Texas. Joshua Haunschild received his BFA in Photography & Imaging from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2012 and his MFA in Photography from Arizona State University in 2019. His work focuses on land usage in the American West, through the lens of traditional landscape photography. Haunschild's work has been displayed at Houston Center for Photography, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Center for Fine Art Photography, and North Light Gallery. He is currently living and working in Los Angeles.
