Astrologer in Reverse
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The Romantic poet-philosopher Novalis called miners “astrologers in reverse” because, whereas astrologers “ceaselessly regard the sky,” miners plunge deep into the Earth and uncover “hidden origins.”
I grew up in an area known, geologically, as the New Jersey Highlands. Like many of the communities scattered throughout the region, mining was the profit motive that founded my hometown, Franklin. The complex orebody extending 1,150 feet beneath its surface was an unfathomable record of pressure, metamorphosis, and time extending to the Precambrian epoch.
In the Spring of 2013, I began surveying Franklin’s physical and psychological topography. Scouring through the local archives, I found a collection of geological maps, which systematized the underground terrain of the region in a set of linear conventions. In response to these optics, my film ASTROLOGER IN REVERSE sorrounds "home" as a multidimenioal extraction site, summons the production of "an origin story," and deals with the embedded violences that build worlds along with ontologies.
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