Seldom Seen Productions - On Cane Creek

On Cane Creek........................

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On Cane Creek is a 48-minute single-channel video in three parts filmed in rural Tennessee and presented at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Pittsburgh in 2012.

I had been thinking about making work in Tennessee for many years. The ugly rift between Red State and Blue State leading up to the last election finally forced me to head south.

Though I was raised and educated in Boston, my family on my mother's side come from Tennessee and now also live in Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia.

I wanted to build something that would shelter both my northern and southern worlds in a shared space, to give each the opportunity to be fully present with the other.

With Joe's help I conducted extensive interviews in Middle Tennessee and gathered imagery on land that my extended family has owned, off and on, for over 150 years.

On Cane Creek, as I see it, is a musical composition, as well as an obviously visual composition, with an operatic finale.

The human instrument heard beyond syntax and text – in cadence, timbre, gesture, beat, silence – is a substantial building block for this piece.

Likewise the complex visual chords that emanate from the natural world.

I knew from the start that I wanted to record a sunrise, in real time, somewhere on Cane Creek but was not prepared for what unfolded before the lens of our camera.

> Jeff James: You've Got to Take Pride in What You Do