Element Studies: Earth/Water/Sky/Fire

Directed by Paul Sharits

The footage, in order of appearance, is: 1. rock strata – along the banks of the Niagara River, before it empties into Lake Ontario, 1975, while an artist-in-residence at Artpark, Lewiston, N.Y. (Originally a three-screen panorama study); 2. flow patterns of the Niagara River. Same place/time as the rock strata. (Originally a four-screen panorama study); 3. fire juxtaposed to a rhythmic flow of cloud formations. Shot during S.W. American desert trip, 1971. The fire is a burning car which Indians had set on fire to attract and trick passing cars at night. The Indians sat off in the darkness, getting a great deal of amusement from watching concerned travelers come up to inspect the scene of the “disaster”; the Indians were having their laughs, as if watching a hilarious TV program. The clouds were shot to create a sort of inventory of “cloudness” – thousands of shots of thousands of different cloud formations; these are edited in rhythms like those of fire’s flame pulses.