Lita Albuquerque, still from 20/20: Accelerando, 2016, 3 channel color video with sound, 26:53 min, courtesy of the artist and USC Fisher Museum of Art.
Light and space veteran Lita Albuquerque delivers a visually potent neo-mythology in her latest work 20/20 Accelerando currently at USC’s Fisher Museum.
Adapted from the artist’s 2003 manuscript GenIUS Remembered, Albuquerque collaborated with artists Robbie C. Williamson and Cassandra Bickman to craft the piece. The result: a multimedia installation and film that envelops the Fisher in motion, sound and sculpture.
At times Albuquerque’s 20/20 seduces the viewer with atmospheric genius and otherworldly calm, but frequently the show is saturated with reductions and painfully over-trodden tropes.
The exhibit navigates the Fisher’s space deftly, allowing the visual environment of the installation to temper the sometimes overwrought tone of the film. It is as much about seeing what is in front of you as what is not present.
Each of the three galleries house giant screens. Entering through the center of the museum, the installation is anchored by a close-up of our protagonist, the astronaut, in repose. In the projection, wandering palms sway above her and cast shadows upon her face. Her eyes lift and settle every now and then in organic loops of wake and rest.
The rooms on either side of the entrance present the audience with two different sets of imagery. They are angled so at any given time the screens from the other rooms are obscured (save for a not-so-secret sweet spot nestled between the galleries). The inability to experience all parts of the installation at once, a metaphor for the fractured nature of memory and perception.
The western gallery contains seven tons of salt smoothed into soft and pillowy piles resembling a shore of crystal sand. Colored hourglasses and metal coils lay before a 14 x 24 foot screen. To the east, the gallery is bare save for the monumental film projection and cushioned bench.
20/20 Accelerando can be elemental and intoxicating but is paired with a metaphysically hollow narrative. There is an mesmerizing quality to the wide-scale shots of oceans, night skies and star-scapes but the film’s attempts at spiritual insight are decidedly underwhelming.
Lita Albuquerque, still from 20/20: Accelerando, 2016, 3 channel color video with sound, 26:53 min. Photo by Kelby Vera.
“I will go back to the impact and the deep amnesia that followed” begins the nameless astronaut played by Albuquerque’s daughter Jasmine.
Jasmine Albuquerque is a presence. Her white blonde hair and hyper-blue eyes do invoke a cosmic otherness and she carries herself with uninhibited poise. It is easy to believe she’s a visitor from the 25th century.
After a crash landing to earth, we travel with the astronaut as she tries to rehabilitate her consciousness and return to her mission of bestowing her cosmic knowledge throughout the universe. The film’s central journey happens between the worlds of memory and forgetting, but it muddies its feet with poor attempts at insight that fall like card-stock platitudes.
Lita Albuquerque, still from 20/20: Accelerando, 2016, 3 channel color video with sound, 26:53 min, courtesy of the artist and USC Fisher Museum of Art.
The astronaut’s saga is intertwined with vibrant landscapes and narrations that waver between poetic and heavy-handed. One room displays subtitles to the melodic but fictive language developed by Cassandra Bickman. The other lets you bask in the sound of voices distanced from the nature of meaning.
The astronaut’s journey continues and she meets a requisite native healer who revives the sun bleached woman’s health.
Although the pairing is cliche, there is a certain beauty in the gestures between the astronaut and man. Some of the films most beautiful moments spring from these moves. They are in strange concert with each other. Elbows to elbows, palms to palms their intimacy is unspoiled.
The pair lie on their backs with hands aloft, twisting their palms in unison. As they look to the sky, their hands tense and pull apart as if tugging at some imaginary string of life. The old man draws a map of the universe on the soles of her feet and she is finally strong enough to depart.
Lita Albuquerque, still from 20/20: Accelerando, 2016, 3 channel color video with sound, 26:53 min, courtesy of the artist and USC Fisher Museum of Art.
Diving into nascent waters, the astronaut finds a cave filled with secret knowledge. She reeducates herself. Submerged, the film finds rhythm as the narrative begins to relax its thrust. The names of stars are belted with an intensity that matches the dramatics of Albuquerque’s message.
“The sky reminded me of where I came from” the astronaut invokes early on. And it is where the film returns. The sensual pairing of light, darkness coupled with powerful sound explode into an exciting but predictable finale and brings the piece home.
20/20 Accelerando is a rich experience with ornamentary plot. Its best moments speak in the intervals of silence. Although 20/20 references flawless sight, Accelerando’s improvisational sparks are clearer than it’s didactic vision.
Perhaps, Albuquerque and I just listen to different voices. We see in varied shades of life. But I must agree, there is something about the stardust.
20/20 Accelerando is at USC’s Fisher museum until April 10th, 2016. The museum is free to the public and open from 11am to 5pm Tuesday through Saturday.