Aesthetocracy | Projects

On a continuous loop, video is projected into a 30 gallon fish tank set on a three foot high stand. The image is focused on a vellum screen at the back of the tank. The video is of a small town fully submerged and filmed upside down under the surface of the water. The image of the video is again reflected in the sides of the tank and under the surface of the water filling the tank. On the floor in front of the piece is a kneeler, allowing the audience to view the work themselves from below the surface of the water, putting themselves within the flood.

"These Wonders of Technology: wherein the Art itself is a mighty Confluence of Light and Sound: quite foreign to my Thinking: yet considering my Adventures not at all beyond the Scope of my Credulity: conjures up in me nothing more than the Physical Manifestation of the Phenomenal. I re- member well my first Experiences with Cameras Obscurae: they were no less exhilarating! Michael Bosworth is working with similar media, only the realm of his projection takes place in a fish tank: a tiny, dilu- vial suburbia. It’s a singularly poetic evocation of natural di- saster, the sort of thing we read about all the time, or watch on the internet; but rarely, if ever, have the grave misfortune to know personally.

Michael and I met while in my recent visit to Flubbnyglof, which translates roughly as Ethereal City, or City of Volu- minous Clouds (43°N, 79°W): a Place worthy of some Remark. I had traveled there some thirty Years previous, finding it then to be a Land of Odd Enterprise: its Inhabitants of considerable Resourcefulness. In these and other Sundry Regards it has remained unchanged: while, despite the ap- parent Opulence: the Magnificent Temples to the Arts and Learning: there were interspersed throughout the Territory large Tracts of Squalor and Despondency. In the Heat of the Summer: for it was that Season: I witnessed a great Array of Subjects of both Sexes who roamed the Streets of the Metropolis much in the Manner of Ghosts: numinous and inchoate: with little or no Movement of the Eyes or Limbs: it being my Assumption that those of greater Accomplishment and Vitality remained within their Grand Houses: wherein I understood the air to be artificially cooled. All the while I no- ticed with some degree of Discomfiture that my every Move- ment was in some fashion Surveilled whither I wandered: an abiding Awareness of Subliminal Restiveness and Violence.

As is my Want, Departure from Flubbnyglof was met with little Resistance and some Measure of Relief: for I am at most become by the ragged Persistence of Age a Brittle and Obdurate Wanderer: though Traces of my Journey are paint- ed in a most Excellent Light: despite the Sufferances of prior Description.
I had a good time too."

Bill Maynes, Guest Curator