Dust Storm (Dalhart, Texas) 2007 is based on a single archival photograph of a storm from the 1930s American Dust Bowl, a man-made environmental catastrophe caused by a surge in petroleum based power, and a major contributor to what became the Great Depression. No moving images of the event are known to exist. The production of this work involved the virtual reconstruction - based on hundreds of the artists own photographs and films - of a ten-mile square section of Texan landscape close to the town of Dalhart, a landscape dotted with windmills, farms and fences. This documentation was subsequently enhanced by publicly accessible satellite and topographical data. Once activated, a virtual storm unfolds in a sculptural and constantly random manner within the reconstructed landscape.
Note: John Gerrard will give an artist's talk at MOMA on October 25th, at 7pm, for their Modern Mondays series. More information here.