Moment Magnitude

Submission to 6X6 Disaster; Selected for event
Artist: Chris Basmajian
Title: Moment Magnitude
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Description: For this collaboration with Invisible Venue (IV), Chris Basmajian has mined the legacy of the Loma Prieta earthquake by incorporating varied recollections of the event in the production of a text-based video. "Moment Magnitude," the resulting work was presented in an unsanctioned public screening in the West Oakland memorial park along Mandela Parkway at sunset, on the evening of October 17th, 2009, the 20th anniversary of the quake. Personal recollections were solicited in an open call to the Invisible Venue and Rhizome.org community. To emphasize the fleeting quality of memory, submissions were limited to 140 text characters--a limitation that bears further significance in current communication technologies, such as Twitter and text messaging, and draws a sharp measure for how much has changed in the 20 years that have passed since 1989. Indeed, this observation is brought into sharp focus as the recollections are markedly absent of references to the technologies that we rely upon so heavily today--such as cell phones, digital voice mail, text messaging, or email--but rather recall previously essential and now completely outmoded tools such as payphones. Further exploring the relationship of time to the subject and the medium, Basmajian combines contemporary video footage of areas that suffered severe damage with memories in the form of narrative text, including images of the Bay Bridge and the area of Oakland that housed the collapsed Cypress Street Viaduct on the Nimitz Freeway. These 15 second segments match the duration the '89 quake and seem unending when compared with the speed of communication today. The project takes its title, Moment Magnitude, from the standardized seismological measuring system that evaluates the strength of an earthquake. Moment magnitude replaced the Richter magnitude scale as the preferred incremental measurement in the 1970s, though the later term is still circulated in popular vernacular . In this exploration of text and language as moving image, Basmajian further mines an area of inquisition common to his larger practice and, in so doing, highlights the intrinsic relationships of memory, place, and image.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• 6X6
• Disaster