plants and birds

    When I first heard about plant, a video currently being shown at the Detroit Institute of Arts, my eyes rolled so far back in my head that even a specially designed pair of 3D glasses could not render my sight operational enough to view it.  But once I came to terms with the fact that someone had made a video of the abandoned Packard plant (and not, I might add, a tribute to Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin or the film "The Song Remains the Same", although parts reminded me of it I must admit) and it was now being shown in our most prestigious art establishment, I was able to relax and take from it a few pleasurable things.  More than anything, it was the sound of birds.
     The birds you hear while viewing plant, a video of stitched-together photographs by Paul Kaiser and the OpenEnded Group, are essential.  They are what's missing from every photo you've seen of a Detroit ruin.  This is the actual, tranquil soundtrack to the empty spaces in the city; the reminder that life is still here.  The most accurate description of Detroit's sound would be to compare it to an aviary.  If you walk enough, through all the lonely places here, you will know this to be true.
     Yes, the video has that vast shot of the big, empty factory interior, the one that makes it look eerie and sinister.  (For more of this you can go downstairs at the DIA and see it in the woefully unoriginal photographs by Andrew Moore:  a photograph of an empty Ford plant taking up most of a gallery wall, even though a postage stamp would have sufficed since, yes, we get it, we got it years ago; and then one of a homeless person's camp inside the former Globe Trading building.  "Do you believe where some people live?" I overheard a woman saying; apparently not realizing this is where she lives too).  But beyond this typical depiction of industrial ruins, plant portrays the building as an evolving, moving, living entity in an almost organic sense, which certainly lends itself well to the title.  Much of the time it looks nothing like the conventional images of the Packard plant, and instead is full of abstractions and confusing, bent light—which is actually more representational of what the real plant looks like—creating a depiction that is both oddly ancient and futuristic.  Indeed, this is not a virtual tour of the plant, instead it is more of a deep-rooted feeling of what it's like to be there, which is a disorienting and tingling experience, one that is hard to recount, but this video makes a worthy attempt at conveying this feeling.
     It's good to see the DIA not shying away from the ruins, especially at a time when so many people are here for the North American International Auto Show.  And although it is a bit strange to sit in an art museum and watch something that exists, "just up the street" as the DIA points out, it's even stranger when people want to ignore the ruins.  Certainly most art created about ruins is worth rolling your eyes at, but not necessarily all. 


If you'd like to read more about ruins, here's my most popular post ever, even though most people just look at the pictures: The Hazards Of A Post-Ruin Detroit