THE EXPOSED: Nuclear Workers rally for illness compensation in Oak Ridge, TN from Wes Rehberg on Vimeo.

Posted on-line is a 14-minute video of a rally in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, organized by the Coalition for a Healthy Environment, whose organizers have been working since the mid-1990s for compensation, care and recognition of nuclear weapons worker contamination. Many among this group are sick from the poisons as well. 

        

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) - testimony in Virginia (Between the Ice Ages) from Wes Rehberg on Vimeo.

Five U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, members of IVAW, bore witness in May 2008 to what they experienced in these armed conflicts as well as on their return to the United States. Excerpts from the witness of the veterans -- Adam Kokesh, James Gilligan, Jason Hurd, Ray Curry and James Morriss -- are provided in the video here, filmed by Wes Rehberg. Leonard McGann plays the Native American flute in this 34 minute documentary video, filmed at the Building a New World Conference at Radford University in Virginia, offered by the World Prout Assembly.
© 2008 Wes Rehberg, Wild Clearing
A higher-resolution flash broadband version is available at:
wildclearing.com/ice-ages/ivaw-prout.html

        

Mother Forest sketches - clip2 - the rationale from Wes Rehberg on Vimeo..

   As with the earlier clip here on our work to begin to explore a possible experimental film that would include a segment on the dangers to the mother forest in the U.S., this 8-minute video clip is an attempt to begin to think-through a rationale for such an endeavor on the forests and some ideas and approaches toward filming it -- a higher resolution version is viewable at http://www.wildclearing.com/mother-forest/
-- Wes Rehberg

        

Mother Forest sketches - Savage Falls TN light-hike from Wes Rehberg on Vimeo..

Mother Forest sketches -- (Between the Ice Ages)
... toward a possible experimental film that would include a segment on the fragile, fragmented and increasingly endangered mixed mesophytic U.S. forestland

We're sketching out a possible experimental film that would include a segment on the Appalachian mixed-mesophytic forest and its challenges. The Cumberland forest is said to have served as the mother provider of hardwood trees and other forest life for the North American continent for 150,000 years but now has been decimated and fragmented.

Threats are reported to include logging, development, mining, genetic modification, quarrying, invasive species, and air and water pollutant contamination. A good background on this can be found at the World Wildlife Federation web site. We've also keeping in touch with friends, family and other environmentalists to help guide us on this trail.

Above, as a brief light-hearted start, with Eileen and our rescued dogs Mercury and Jillie, is a six-minute video sketch of a late April hike we took through a trail in the Savage Gulf State Natural Area in south central Tennessee to Savage Falls. The area is a mixed mesophytic forest preserve. Eileen has also gotten out her sketchpad and easel, so graphic art is also forthcoming.

        

"Contaminated Forever" - introductory scenes: a documentary on DU weapons contamination from Wes Rehberg on Vimeo..

        

Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness was in Baghdad, Iraq during the aftermath of Bush's "Shock and Awe" attack. A music school was one of the places plundered - people from the school gave her a tape students sang of "Song of Peace." She sang it herself in Holland, Michigan, to celebrate Jon den Herder of Holland Peacemakers in 2004, who was dying of brain cancer -- video below was filmed then at Leaf & Bean's Third Space in Holland. -- Wes Rehberg

        

Chattanoogans are conducting a peace march and rally on March 22, 2008, to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war debacle and to honor the fallen, the falling and the forgotten -- to urge that our troops be returned home now -- Below is a 30-second video Wild Clearing promo of this event.

        

Midway through our documentary, yet in production, on the terrible consequences of depleted uranium contamination from the use and production of these munitions, I've videoed reflections on how it seems to be going. The reflections were recorded on a MacBookPro using its iSight software. The 10-minute reflection can be found at this Wild Clearing web page  -- Wes Rehberg

        

Featured here is a running 48-minute video account of a press conference at the Albany, NY, state legislative office building organized by the Community Concerned About NL Industries at which research findings were detailed that indicate the long-term persistence of depleted uranium contamination.

Also featured is a 6-minute video sketch of a visit to the NL site by CCNL organizer Tom Ellis and ex-resident Tony Ciarfello, who was found to be contaminated.

SUMMARY: A biological study by Randall Parrish of the NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory in the UK and others has detected depleted uranium and in one case enriched uranium in former workers and those who lived and worked nearby the Colonie, NY, NL Industries plant, where depleted uranium munitions cores were produced decades ago.

Below first is the press conference video sketch and below that the site visit, filmed by Wes Rehberg. produced by Wild Clearing (c) 2007 --

        

"RALLY at Jonesborough, TN:"
"... voices in the struggle against DU munitions"






PART OF UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE OCT. 27, 2007
NATIONWIDE ACTIONS AGAINST THE IRAQ WAR

This 22-minute documentary video was filmed Wes Rehberg
(c) 2007 Wild Clearing

Featured are talks from rally organizer Linda Modica; Vietnam and Iraq war veteran Herbert Reed (DU victim); Caren Neile - storyteller; veteran and conscientious objector Tim Pluta (also DU victim); clips from the protest at Aerojet Ordnance - DU munitions producer; and music from Robert Baldwin, filmmaker and songwriter.

The video may also be viewed in an improved Flash version at this Wild Clearing web page ...

        

VIEQUES ACTIVISTS ON DU IMPACT          Nilda Medina in Vieques

While in Vieques in September 2007, I spoke with Nilda Medina, Ismael Guadalupe, filmmaker Andres Nieves and Robert Rabin, founders and members of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, on the impact from contamination from the U.S. Navy bombing practice on the Puerto Rican island. These interviews are part of a developing documentary on the impact of depleted uranium contamination on people and the environment.    Nilda speaks of the need for health services, Ismael offers insights into the resistance against the U.S. Navy presence for over 60 years and the contamination, Andres tells how he was personally affected, and Robert scopes out the history of the occupation and the extent of the contamination. These are roughly compiled video clips, basically unaltered, about 10 minutes each. To view these,  visit this web page ... -- Wes Rehberg .

Below is a video blogcast of filmmaker Andres Nieve's witness to his discovery of depleted uranium contamination on the island and how that has affected him and his work ...

Download | Duration: 00:06:40

        

The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) conducted a vigil at the site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conceived and manufactured. A ten-minute video of the vigil at Building Y-12 can be viewed blow, Google-ized version ... A downloadable mp4 file of the vigil is available at this Wild Clearing web page ...

        

Wild Clearing continues documentary effort on DU munitions, heading for Vieques, U.S. exposure sites.

The Wild Clearing effort to film a documentary on DU munitions is underway, as noted in posts in this blog, with future plans in place to visit Vieques, exposure sites in the United States and Canada, and over the longer term, Kosovo.    Rough clips from past filming are viewable at links on our depleted uranium weapons blog.. Suggestions of sites and persons to contact that would be helpful in telling this story are especially welcome.   Contact us to let us know.  -- Wes Rehberg, filmmaker

        

Below are links to two rough-edited clips from the Christian Peacemaker Teams May 2007 Stop-DU action confronting Aerojet Ordnance's production of uranium weapons used by the U.S. military in Iraq and elsewhere. One is of an attempt to meet with Aerojet officials, the other of a balloon release with a message inside that said the balloon indicated the airflow from the DU munitions manufacturing plant.

For CPT/FTP May 2007 Stop-DU delegation (for viewing only, not for distribution) ** Video 1-minute rough-edited clip of balloon release - mp4 file ** Video 4-minute rough-edited clip of second visit to Aerojet's entryway to try to meet with Aerojet officials -- mp4 file These are short roughcut video clips to show parts of an upcoming documentary @2007 Wild Clearing all rights reserved

        

Dr. Doug Rokke offered a talk on the dangers of weaponized uranium munitions during the Abolish-DU conference in northeast Tennessee, sponsored by Christian Peacemaker Teams Stop-DU Campaign and First Tennessee Progressives. The weapons were used by the United States in the Balkans, Afghanistan and in Iraq. The conference and delegations were sponsored to highlight uranium weapons production at Aerojet Ordnance in Jonesborough, Tennessee, USA. Go to the web page below to find links to his talk.

Visit this Wild Clearing web page to link to an mp4 or Google video of Rokke's talk.

        

A note from the artist - Eileen Rehberg

The horse in a red still life ...   The objects in the still life are "found objects" collected together for the purposes of exploring the space, both of the objects themselves and the space in between.  The horse object provides a focal point for the discovery process in and around a sensation of colors ... * * * To view these and other works by the artist, click here ...

        

From Foreign Policy in Focus and IPS (Interpress News Service): Aaron Hughes is an artist, activist, and a Veteran of the Iraq War. He served in the Illinois National Guard from 2000 to 2006 and was pulled out of the University of Illinois in January 2003 and deployed to Kuwait and Iraq in April 2003 to July 2004 as an 88M truck driver. On his return to the states he has dedicated his life to making art that will deconstruct the culture of dehumanization and hate that was so prevalent while deployed. He is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. You can see his work at www.aarhughes.org. He talks here with Saif Rahman and John Feffer from Foreign Policy in Focus. Saif Rahman: First and foremost- you are a veteran, an activist, and an artist. How does your work help to express your feelings about the war? Aaron Hughes: To me “art” provides a space to present and communicate complexity. It is not restrictive to a language, a symbol, an ideology, a system, a narrative... but instead “art” can provide a freedom to find new ways to express memories, thoughts, and emotions that can challenge historical ways of communicating. I didn’t understand the war. I did not understand the ease of dehumanization or the ambiguous, anxious convoys of nothingness, for nothing ... For the entire article, click here ...

        

"3 Video Experiments" each look at the "right here, right now" through spontaneously "found" familiar objects/subjects and weave these in experimental interpretive documentary short films that respect surfaces and the ordinary yet seek to see beneath these. Web page for all three is here.
 The video "documentary impressions" - "Night Survey," "Night Survey By 2," and "Elisions ..." - were filmed by Wes Rehberg with SONY high-definition camcorders and are reproduced separately for viewing in a streaming broadband versions in wide-screen format, via the links in this sentence. An embedded YouTube version of "Night Survey by 2" is below ...

        

With all written in the reflections below -- midrash, wild clearing and resistance, and so on -- the essential thing for me is that art develops from within the activity of activism, not as a socialist-realism kind of approach, but from personal encounters. Thus, whether film or photography or the so-called fine arts, these are the form that follows the function of social-justice activism, a key place of my encounters and engagements, but not the only place. One way to see this is as follows: 
Between 1991 & 2004, we engaged in a number of international human-rights efforts, including a few with a partner family ... this is a "part-one" story, really a motion-collage on a timeline, if that's a valid form of documentary expression. We're now in "part two." ... more below ...

... These journeys took us to Nicaragua, Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador, to Chiapas and Hidalgo, Mexico, and to Palestine and Israel. Among encounters were meetings with Fidel Castro, Zapatista leaders, with survivors of massacres in Chiapas and Nicaragua, with indigenous activists who struggled for those in their midst, with persons living under death threat, and with persons struggling to survive with dignity in base-community cooperatives. The video clip on the right touches briefly on these trips. Visit our web sites for more detail ...

        

"Tracing Chattatonia," a 44-minute video documentary collage embracing some themes elaborated on below while filming randomly, is now available. A trailer, also randomized, can be viewed on its Wild Clearing web page or below.

        

Raumgeist and the Frame

 

 

Working my way through Derrida’s “The Truth in Painting,” I’ve tried to parse what he was saying about the frame, the parergon, but not without difficulty. Theoretically, Derrida plays off Kant’s third critique, “The Critique of Judgment,” read several years ago and now vaguely recalled.

 

I’ve been more a practicing theologian than philosopher, and the notion of Wild Clearing was initially conceptualized as a site of resistance, in the context of liberation theology, with the enframing boundary of the clearing the reaction of counter-resistance. The frame, in the case, is always fluid and subject to ruptures and collapse.

 

And since the ‘60s, the notion that is now labeled “raumgeist” here – the spirit of space (like zeitgeist, the spirit of the time) – always contained an inner-space/outer-space relationship, artistically as well as in the opened clearing of a site of resistance, mentioned above.

 

The Derridean/Kantean frame seems less apt to such a rupture, this parergon more a static separation between what’s inside and out, with Kant’s quality, quantity, relationship and modality the artistic characteristics at play inside, arousing pleasure without concept, purposivity without purpose. Without rereading the third critique, I also recall two infinitized characteristics that an artist engages in the act of putting the work in a frame, one quantifiable, and the other a dynamus that is unruly and wild that the artist’s genius is only barely able to gather into a work.

 

Derrida does a couple of things that are intriguing: 1) Using Cranach’s “Lucretia,” he deconstructs the notion of frame to place it within Kant’s parergon, pointing to the knifepoint that Lucretia holds against her flesh, and the slip of a veil across her lower body as two enframing aspects. 2) Derrida also finds a “lack” between a frame and what it encloses and demarks. This “lack” I don’t think refers to Lacan’s, but seems to be, in my difficulty trying to grasp what he means, a space that sets the frame apart from the work so that there is a rupture in the contiguity between frame and work. With Kant, a frame can either enhance or distract from a work. But the “lack” that Derrida posits interrupts this Kantian notion.

 

I envision this lack as the unfilled spaces in a crossword puzzle, perhaps. The characters D_ _ r _ _ a, for example, framing Jacques' nom famille, the lack in this case easily identified. As the clues, and the spaces, become more obscure and complex, so does the lack play a larger role, so that it even eliminates the possibility of conceptualizing letters that may frame a clue, leaving simply a “lack,” a trace without a trace. (Or, on the other hand, one could ask whimsically: Does a Barnett Newman painting really need an added frame?)

 

In the context of a liberation theology approach to Wild Clearing, as another take-off, this “lack” in the enframing boundary between resistance and counter-resistance would be the extent to which mediation would be impossible, and as well, the lack of power within the frame to prevent its collapse.

 

Still, of the two parergonic approaches Derrida takes, the first is the more fascinating to me, because it places the framing element within a work, which itself then encloses the work and whatever artifice might be framing it from without. This, to me, also resonates strongly with “raumgeist.” Briefly put for now, this has two senses:

 

1. As in Wild Clearing, the spirit of that space is the spirit of resistance within the clearing that the resistance opens, the actions of resistance and the resisters within the space forming the irregular, fluid and precarious frame.
2. As in a work of art, the content of the work can supersede the enframing boundaries – as can its formal dynamics – like a film’s effects taking one beyond the 16:9 widescreen aperture ratio, or its content within internal frames transcending those, from the spirit of the space within.

 

In the second sense, I think of two scenes in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s trilogy, “Bleu,” “Blanc,” et “Rouge.” In an opening scene of “Blanc,” a suitcase trundles along a conveyer. One later discovers that it encloses the protagonist, reconstituting its enframing assumption so that its interior space has a spirit quite different from what might have been initially assumed. And, in a closing scene of “Rouge,” the protagonists of the three films emerge together from a ferry disaster as the sole survivors, also adding both a different frame to the trilogy from within this scene, as well as a different spirit within the space each film engendered.

 

© Wes Rehberg 2007

 

 

 

        

Khora, energy-field and trace –

 

I’m trying to work out Derrida’s notions of “trace” and his interpretation of Plato’s “khora,” with the idea of energy-field, as these may play in the “documentary” project I’ve been undertaking.

 

Simply put, and without references, Plato in the Timaeus talks about that which receives, or in which is inscribed the phenomena that our senses engage. On one side, it’s given a maternal receptivity, like a nurse holding a child, but on another, it’s indistinct, not a thing, but yet a place that contains the beyond beyond, the eidos, particularly the Good, which itself informs the field of phenomena, which it also contains. The latter interpretation of khora is what intrigued Derrida, and it’s this khora that he called the surname of différance.

 

So, I’ve been randomly filming around the Chattanooga region what I perceive to be “traces,” but as those in an energy-field, clearings opening and displaying traces, as well as being traces in themselves, and displaced traces. The notion of the khora helps nest all this, so the space of the film by extension emulates that of the khora, the space/place where the field and the traces (and the film) reside.

 

Problem is how is this structured over time as a film, a video? And though it is like a documentary, not fiction, by engaging scenes and people as they are when the camera rolls, what genre am I working in?

 

The working name for what I’m doing is “Chattatonic Traces,” but that sounds too clever and maybe reflects my own catatonia when it comes to the “aporia,” the impasse and gap I’m facing in trying to reconcile these notions and scenes cinematically.

 

Structure and thematic coherency are the problems.

 

 

        

A Question of Age and Discovery

 

It’s hard to figure why age has relevance to the creative spirit, or why age may be considered relevant to whether one has capability as an artist. The inspiration yet comes, the muse still guides, the capacity to work within a medium still is there. Charles Ives, composer, began his work in earnest while he was in his sixties; Henri Matisse created with cutouts when no longer able to adequately wield a brush, the catalog is long – but almost all artists do it all their lives. I’ve only worked sporadically until now.

 

So, at age 70, two years into video making, I try to figure out where it all goes – thus the musings of past thoughts: midrash, vulnerability, notions, documentary impressions, chiasm, dreams, and on. I work solo, these days mainly on the streets of Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA. I’ve gone from older used “prosumer” equipment (Canon GL1, Sony TRV900 – which Agnes Varda used in Gleanings, and Sony VX2000) to new “prosumer” Sony high-definition cameras (HDR-FX1, HDR-HC1 [often with a Canon wide angle adapter lens]), all the while editing on Sony Vegas software – not that I’m plugging Sony or Canon, it’s what works for me.

 

The question of age figures in nevertheless. I work solo, out of choice, no crew, thinking of the camcorder as one might a still camera, recalling the ways Cartier-Bresson and Eugene Smith worked maybe, considering photojournalism, but also on movement, surfaces, reflections, textures, sounds, sweeps, images that are barely discernable, mystery, vulnerability, multiple exposures, death and life, rhythms – that is on more than journalism, but on something personal and perhaps unique, the way things “hit and fit,” as mentioned, on discovery.

 

What is it that is to be discovered within one’s own lexicons, elisions, vocabularies, sensibilities, emotions, and so on? Where do I go to find that? Is an audience relevant to what I do? Is acceptability? Do I look to a marketplace for artistic esteem? Yes, in a sense to all these questions, but no, in another sense, because something is lost in the creative process if one tries to discern what pleases instead of working on the creative contours of one’s own calling and gift, however measurable.

 

There is no “inside-track” in this sense to artistic work (I’ve been thinking about putting together something called “Outside Tracks”). Whatever is authentic is more what it’s about. Even though I try to define it, I keep coming back to what “hits and fits.”

 

 

        

 

 

I think the difference between me and the realists is that I want – perhaps like the surrealists – to open a scene up as if it were a mysterious memory, once forgotten and not quite retrievable. Like a dream that wakes one but remains elusive and yet impels. That feeling and mindfulness.

 

But I want to do this in a documentary-style setting, with realistic coordinates and images – that can be seen through, as if one would say: “I know that, that’s a person nodding his head rhythmically.” Or, “That’s a woman taking a survey, a man putting out a cigarette on a wall …” But, in this midst, is another meaning, elusive, not quite graspable, that the mind, maybe the forebrain, the soul, wants to know more about, to explore in the imagination, yet remains un-nameable.

 

Not all scenes would carry this tension … some would be, are, simply what is present to the senses, but the mystery-scene, once it comes, turns the others toward it, seeks interpretation in the fullest sense of mind and feeling.

 

Maybe what I’m really getting at is postmodern-surrealism.

        

Mystery and Vulnerability ...

 

Surfaces and the mystery beneath, and vulnerability, are creative themes I prefer. Surfaces become fragile and translucent, and the mystery is the Wild that opens a Clearing in the midst of the interplay between these all.

 

The thematics of vulnerability and mystery also relate to how body moves in the reality that presents as body negotiates in the midst of surfaces that seem impermeable to it, but which also can wound it, penetrate it, soothe it, warm it, chill it, kill it. Even the wind becomes a surface.

 

So the Simple Meaning presents in vulnerability at the surface with mystery lurking, may reveal a Clue, which in the presentation opens up Interpretation – not only reasoned but felt, and as well an opportunity to illuminate the Wild Clearing in Mystery, even the Mystic.