March 1, 2016
Storytelling through audio – These 12 soundworks, featuring the voices of Rebecca Rideout and Mark McPhee, were inspired by geographic locations within the Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve and surrounding regions of South Florida. Points of departure include evidence of human passage and its effect on the
river of grass, tales of man versus nature and nature versus exotic. Conversations with local inhabitants, historical research and onsite recording have contributed to the atmosphere of these works.
Open Full Screen
July 8, 1905. The Bay is calm. The shore is a thin line of land, the sky faint blue, white. From Oyster Key, Flamingo appears to be a distant mirage.
In the darkness of the seldom taken, a thin black cat dances out onto the yellow line of a secondary highway,
before vanishing into thick foliage, six foot higher than he.
The deer pen was built in July 1934. There are a few photographs depicting the area but little information exists on why it was built. Although it is located in the forest near a well-known trail, it is difficult to find.
Searching for a landmark in an overgrown setting, a woman is overcome by the atmosphere rising from the landscape.
This area of the Everglades National Park has been closed since 2013. The gates are chained shut and the Rangers’ houses are boarded up. Chekika is a zone, the ruins of dreams.
Prompted by a 2014 tour through a missile launch site in the Everglades National Park, a woman reflects on the time when the Russian/Cuban/American nuclear standoff threatened to end life as we know it.
There is one road that leads from the Everglades National Park entrance to Flamingo. There are no streets lights and at night, it is very dark.
Some people say that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were surveillance bunkers built along the Old Ingraham Road. Others deny the existence of such structures.
1962. An army camp is being set up in a tomato field, in the middle of the Everglades. The noise is deafening. A black cone at the tip of a missile indicates a nuclear warhead.
Single lane and almost deserted, the Loop Road runs through the Big Cypress National Preserve. A sprinkling of people live there, mostly down narrow laneways that twist back into the trees. It has a reputation for being moonshine country.
An abandoned mango forest is slipping back into the natural world. In July, the mango season is coming to an end and most of the fruit has fallen to the ground. Armed against the night with flashlights, two men set out into the rows of trees to find Burmese pythons.
A mystery begins to form when a researcher finds uprooted plants on a Loop Road bridge. Tension mounts when a second car stops in that remote location.
