{"id":2216,"date":"2021-10-26T12:48:17","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T10:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/?page_id=2216"},"modified":"2021-10-27T18:35:08","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T16:35:08","slug":"surveying-grandeur","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/en\/surveying-grandeur\/","title":{"rendered":"Surveying Grandeur"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Surveying Grandeur: Cyrill Lachauer\u2019s Moon and Half Dome (Greetings to Muir and Adams)<\/i> (2020)<\/p>\n

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by Karen Irvine<\/p>\n

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Cyrill Lachauer probes the political and environmental implications of the U.S. American West\u2019s mythology through the legacies of two of its icons, conservationist John Muir and photographer Ansel Adams.<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/1.-Adams_Muir_Still-2.jpg” alt=”Wang Tuo, The Interrogation (\u5ba1\u95ee), 2017. Video still. Single channel HD video, 18\u201935\u201d. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection” title_text=”1. Adams_Muir_Still” module_id=”img1″ _builder_version=”4.11.4″ _module_preset=”default” width=”70%” max_width=”70%” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_id=”tptext” _builder_version=”4.11.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” custom_margin=”10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

Cyrill Lachauer, Moon and Half Dome\u00a0(Greetings to Muir and Adams)<\/i>, 2018-2020. Camera: Immanuel Hick,\u00a0S\u00ad16mm loop, 6\u201923\u2019\u2019 (b\/w,\u00a0silent). Courtesy of the artist; and Sammlung Goetz, Munich. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection<\/p>\n

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Originally developed for the home market in the 1930s, 16 mm film was the primary vehicle for educational, industrial, government, and television news productions by the 1950s. Largely due to its affordability and ease of use, it remained the dominant cinema format outside of the Hollywood studio system until the 1990s. More refined than 8 mm yet not as polished as 35 mm, 16 mm is idiosyncratic, producing a grain that gives the film a timeless quality and a noticeable texture. Essentially, 16 mm renders a flawed image.<\/p>\n

Moon and Half Dome (Greetings to Muir and Adams)<\/i> (2020), by Cyrill Lachauer (Germany, b. 1979), employs 16 mm film to probe the history and mythology of the U.S. American West. Specifically, it evokes the legacies of two of its most fabled figures, conservationist John Muir (USA, 1838\u20131914) and photographer Ansel Adams (USA, 1902\u20131984). Taking one of Adams\u2019s most seminal photographs, Moon and Half Dome<\/i> (1951), as his starting point, Lachauer re-creates its composition perfectly in front of his camera\u2019s lens, replacing the moon with a John Muir memorial quarter being held aloft by the artist\u2019s own hand. The film\u2019s \u201caction\u201d is limited to the coin reflecting and flaring the light of the sun as the arm struggles to remain still over the span of 6 minutes and 23 seconds.<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/2.-Moon_and_Half_Dome_more_stills_04-2.jpg” alt=”Cyrill Lachauer, Moon and Half Dome (Greetings to Muir and Adams), 2018-2020. Camera: Immanuel Hick, S\u00ad16mm loop, 6\u201923\u2019\u2019 (b\/n). Courtesy dell\u2019artista; e Sammlung Goetz, Monaco di Baviera. Collezione Fondazione In Between Art Film” title_text=”2. Moon_and_Half_Dome_more_stills_04″ module_id=”img1″ _builder_version=”4.11.4″ _module_preset=”default” width=”70%” max_width=”70%” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_id=”tptext” _builder_version=”4.9.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” custom_margin=”10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

Cyrill Lachauer, Moon and Half Dome\u00a0(Greetings to Muir and Adams)<\/i>, 2018-2020. Camera: Immanuel Hick,\u00a0S\u00ad16mm loop, 6\u201923\u2019\u2019 (b\/w,\u00a0silent). Courtesy of the artist; and Sammlung Goetz, Munich. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection<\/p>\n

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Like Adams, Lachauer works with finicky analogue materials, but unlike Adams, he embraces their imperfections. Adams was known for his technical virtuosity and for establishing his famous zone system, which taught generations of photographers how to properly expose and develop film. As the sunlight bounces off Lachauer\u2019s quarter, the flare is so bright that it burns through the emulsion of his film, creating completely blown-out highlights that Adams would have found sacrilegious. When the work is screened, these moments become empty spaces in the image that are filled by the projector\u2019s white light\u2014creating information voids within Lachauer\u2019s conceptual fusion of Adams and Muir.<\/p>\n

As the work underscores, the histories of Adams and Muir are intertwined. Born twelve years before Muir died, Adams often credited Muir as an inspiration, and throughout his career, he continually linked his photographs to Muir\u2019s legacy. At the age of fourteen he joined the Sierra Club, a conservation organization founded by Muir in 1892, and remained active in the club until his death. He used Muir\u2019s texts to caption his photographs in his 1948 book Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada<\/i>, <\/i>and his heirs followed this trajectory by pairing the two in the 1997 publication America\u2019s Wilderness: The Photographs of Ansel Adams with the Writings of John Muir<\/i>. Like Muir, Adams was an active conservationist, and famously used his photographs to lobby the US government to establish the Kings Canyon National Park in the 1930s. Great public relations tools, Adams\u2019s photographs of soaring sequoia trees, dramatic waterfalls, and majestic mountain ranges provided many U.S. Americans with their first views of the parks that weren\u2019t paintings. Unpeopled, sharp, and well-composed, his photographs present a romantic view of nature. Like Muir\u2019s writings, they became iconic and have played a central role in shaping the U.S. American public\u2019s perception of what great landscapes look like.<\/p>\n

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Cyrill Lachauer, Justin<\/i>, 2018-2020. Camera:\u00a0Immanuel Hick,\u00a0S\u00ad16mm film transferred on 2k video, 10\u201951\u2019\u2019 (color,\u00a0stereo sound). Courtesy of the artist; and Sammlung Goetz, Munich<\/p>\n

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Also enamored with the area, Lachauer has traveled to Yosemite from his home in Germany every year for the past decade, and the park is a frequent point of departure for his works. In Justin<\/i> (2020) he collaborated with a queer member of the Yosemite National Park staff, and filmed the park worker dancing in a meadow, injecting the hallowed national park space with an antidote to the inflated masculinity that surrounds the mythology of the West. In a slide-show work called Fire Fall<\/i>\u00a0(2020), footage culled from the 1954 film\u00a0The Caine Mutiny<\/i>\u00a0depicts a tradition, since terminated, of pushing a bonfire over Yosemite\u2019s Glacier Point as a spectacle for tourists. <\/i>By resurrecting this ecologically destructive display from the past, Lachauer raises the question of why our ideal conception of nature always skews toward the grand and dramatic.<\/p>\n

In Moon and Half Dome (Greetings to Muir and Adams)<\/i> Lachauer probes our idealization of nature further by confronting the iconic status of Muir and Adams head-on. Indeed, John Muir and Ansel Adams were drawn to these majestic views, and in their own ways they both promoted the idea that any nature worth preserving should be extraordinary. By focusing their work on these remote and wild places, they underscored the conception that humankind and nature are separate entities in the world. Furthermore, the view that conservation should be focused on preservation shrouds the fact that widespread industry is the primary cause of environmental destruction. Taken together, Lachauer\u2019s Yosemite works are microcosms of universal issues, inciting questions such as: why is nature considered a space separated from us? Why are we focused on preserving relatively small swaths of land when so many bigger areas are being rapidly destroyed? Why do we talk enthusiastically about the grandeur of nature, and give so much less attention to its subtleties?<\/p>\n

TAKEN TOGETHER, LACHAUER\u2019S YOSEMITE WORKS ARE MICROCOSMS OF UNIVERSAL ISSUES, INCITING QUESTIONS SUCH AS: WHY IS NATURE CONSIDERED A SPACE SEPARATED FROM US? WHY ARE WE FOCUSED ON PRESERVING RELATIVELY SMALL SWATHS OF LAND WHEN SO MANY BIGGER AREAS ARE BEING RAPIDLY DESTROYED? WHY DO WE TALK ENTHUSIASTICALLY ABOUT THE GRANDEUR OF NATURE, AND GIVE SO MUCH LESS ATTENTION TO ITS SUBTLETIES?<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/4.-Fire_Fall-2.jpg” alt=”Cyrill Lachauer, Fire Fall, 2018-2020. Proiezione di diapositiva singola. Courtesy dell\u2019artista; e Sammlung Goetz, Monaco di Baviera. ” title_text=”4. Fire_Fall” module_id=”img1″ _builder_version=”4.11.4″ _module_preset=”default” width=”70%” max_width=”70%” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_id=”tptext” _builder_version=”4.11.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” custom_margin=”10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

Cyrill Lachauer, Fire Fall<\/i>, 2018-2020. Single slide projection.\u00a0 <\/span>Courtesy of the artist; and Sammlung Goetz, Munich<\/p>\n

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In Lachauer\u2019s film he holds the coin aloft, asserting his presence as an author (a point also stressed by the \u201cgreeting\u201d in the title), and serving as a direct affront to the idea that a camera is an impartial recorder of information. We are reminded that all photographs and histories are subjective. Lachauer\u2019s hand also adds to Adams\u2019s and Muir\u2019s white cisgender male presence a third protagonist with the same identity, a deliberately self-aware admission of the artist\u2019s own power. The mythology of the U.S. American West is dominated by the explorations of white European men like Muir, and in many ways their stories have racism baked into them. Muir, for example, kept company with Sierra Club members who advocated for white supremacy and promoted eugenics, and was completely dismissive of the indigenous native populations he met while exploring the West. He once wrote about Indigenous peoples of the United States that \u201cthe worst thing about them is their uncleanliness,\u201d1<\/sup><\/span> and that they <\/span>\u201cseemed to have no right or place in the landscape,\u201d2<\/sup> <\/span>even though <\/span>they had been living on North American land for well over 20,000 years.3<\/sup><\/span> Indeed, his conception of a pure wilderness unshaped by human beings depends on the deletion of this population.<\/span><\/p>\n

The technology required to show Lachauer\u2019s Moon and Half Dome (Greetings to Adams and Muir) <\/i>is a bulky projector that whirs and whizzes as the film cools while suspended between fast-moving reels. In an exhibition space today it is a novelty, but the clunky contraption is antiquated and competes for attention with the projected image. A deliberate choice by Lachauer, this anachronism alone is inconsequential. But equipped with a film that deflates two of the most revered conservationists of the twentieth century, the entirety of the installation unsettles the conception of nature that these men construed, suggesting that certain problematic narratives be made obsolete.<\/p>\n

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Karen Irvine<\/b>, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Museum of Contemporary Photography\u00a0at Columbia College, Chicago<\/p>\n

She has organized over fifty exhibitions of contemporary photography at the MoCP and other venues including the Hyde Park Art Center;\u00a0 <\/span>Rockford Art Museum; Lishui International Photography Festival, China; Daegu Photography Biennale, South Korea, and the New York Photo Festival. Irvine has contributed texts to many publications including FOAM<\/i>, Art on Paper<\/i> and Contemporary<\/i> magazines and monographs including Paula McCartney: Non-flights of Fancy <\/i>(Princeton Architectural Press); Barbara Probst: Exposures<\/i> (Steidl); Redheaded Peckerwood<\/i> by Christian Patterson (MACK), and Stefan Heyne Speak to Me<\/i> (Hatje Cantz), amongst many others. She has a BA in French and International Relations from Tufts University, Medford, MA, an MFA in photography from FAMU, Prague, Czech Republic, and an MA in art history from the University of Illinois at Chicago.<\/p>\n

Cyrill Lachauer, <\/b>Artist<\/p>\n

Cyrill Lachauer lives and works in Berlin and in phases in Los Angeles. Lachauer studied ethnology, film, and fine arts in Munich and Berlin. Among others, he has been awarded scholarships\u00a0by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York; the Villa Aurora, Los Angeles, and prizes like the short film award of the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen. His work was most recently shown at the Berlinische Galerie – State Museum for Modern Art in Berlin (2017), and at Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020\/21).<\/p>\n

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1 John Muir, quoted in \u201cMuir\u2019s Early Indian Views: Another Look At My First Summer In The Sierra,\u201d by Ross Wakefield, Reprinted from The John Muir Newsletter, v.5, no. 1, Winter 1994-95, https:\/\/vault.sierraclub.org\/john_muir_exhibit\/john_muir_newsletter\/wakefield_indian_views.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n

2 John Muir, quoted in \u201cSierra Club Apologizes for Racist Views of \u2018Father of National Parks\u2019 John Muir,\u201d Associated Press, The Guardian<\/i>, July 23, 2020, https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2020\/jul\/23\/john-muir-sierra-club-apologizes-for-racist-views<\/a><\/p>\n

3 Adam Rutherford, \u201cA New History of the First Peoples in the Americas,\u201d The Atlantic<\/i>, October 3, 2017,\u00a0 <\/span>https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2017\/10\/a-brief-history-of-everyone-who-ever-lived\/537942\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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