by Laine Rettmer
Of Other Spaces is made up of video and photographic works that focus on the ruptures of and needs for a redefinition of social connections. These pieces look at the TWA Hotel, a monument to 1960’s American ideals of the nuclear family, capitalism, travel, and leisure, juxtaposed with The Pines Resort, an abandoned “family” resort in upstate New York, and the concrete mines and plants that created and developed these sites. Thus the work examines the extraction of New York’s natural resources to build edifices whose original ethics of community decay while their insistence on their outdated values persist. Pointing forward, the pieces hope to posit new sites of resistance. By making visible the decay and alienation of these structures, they imagine inclusionary futures.
Credits
Director: Laine Rettmer
Producer: Andrea Merkx
Cinematographer: Andrea Merkx, Jess Bennet
This work was supported by an invited residency at the Vermont Studio Center