Here On The Way There

Comfort Station, Illinois
2013

The green screen is an infinite "site” on an infinite scale in an intimate production. Comfort Station was built as a rest stop for a journey on the way “there”.

This project is a set of propositions.

On the one hand, it is a question of how to make the green screen an object when its color is an infinite “site”. In fact, it is not even the color that matters but the technology that is used to single out the hue and replace it. The technology acts as the vehicle in the traverse between the colored surface “here” and the new landscape “there”. Is it possible to acknowledge the material condition of the color while attempting to re-position its site?

On the other hand, it is a question of the current site, Comfort Station, being an obsolete rest stop for a journey that no longer necessitates travel. Until now as a programed venue for arts and culture, Comfort Station has never been a central destination. The station was originally built as a rest stop along the trolley system in greater Chicago area. How can it call on its past as an intermediary when you must go there as a site to experience it? With the advent of the internet and remote technologies that allow us to be there without being there - or rather to be there without getting there – the idea of the journey is no longer one of mechanical, physical exhaustion. So now Comfort Station is a site

Score performed on piano by Rose DiSalvo-Herzog
Assistance by Prima Sakuntabhai and Theo Darst

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