the forest and the other

the forest and the other
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

janet cardiff's "her long black hair" is a guided audio-walk of central park. the narration is a bit heavy-handed but the field-recorded sounds are both pleasant and disorienting; when you walk past a duck pond you hear ducks but they may not be the ducks before you - or may not be the ducks before you at that moment; when you walk past a steep stone outcropping, you hear one kid shout warnings to another not to get too close to the edge; you look up and around and don't see them. it's a clear, beautiful day, and there are ghosts (as the narrator might say). this shot is very atypical of me (maybe I'm not as ironic as I'd like to think I am; after all, I thought the movie shown on the bus ride to ny, will smith in hitch, was kind of cute until I thought about it and the romantic-comedy encouragement of behavior that in the real world would amount to no less than stalking; not to mention yet another romanticized other who teaches the not-other - need I add, the not-other who can afford to hire the other? - how to get down), like that cheesy w. eugene smith shot of his kids wandering into the woods, but it stuns me.