University of Montevallo

 

Collin Williams

Associate Professor

New Media

Radioactive Prometheus... How Apropos

2008

Installation:

parabolic domes, bell jar, woodpecker, pedestal, sound.

 

Radioactive Prometheus... How Apropos

2008

Installation:

parabolic domes, bell jar, woodpecker, pedestal, sound.

 

 

Radioactive Prometheus... How Apropos

2008

Installation:

Spoken Word Narrative 1. Each parabolic dome played one of these 4 narratives. The narrative was repeated as a text circling around the inner perimeter of the dome.

Narrative 1:    1:55 min., 270 words.
I watched a black and white woodpecker with a red head peck on the telephone pole in the front-yard.  It has been working diligently on that pole for a couple of weeks. I guess it is pecking out a nest. The hole is so big at this point, that to enlarge it further, the woodpecker disappears completely within the hole, followed by the muffled sound of its pecking. It sounds like some sort of woodpecker sub-woofer, reverberating out of the pole as a muffled staccato, punctuated at broken intervals by the woodpecker’s high pitched squawk. I imagine it pecking the entire way through, maybe until the entire top of the pole snaps off. Some days she runs to the very top of the pole and pecks on the metal strap that connects the telephone lines. At first I thought, “Well, birdbrain. How stupid?”.  I became curious as this act was repeated daily over the weeks of my observation. My research describes this behavior as ‘drumming’ and attributes it as part of the woodpecker’s mating ritual. Apparently it is  performed to attract potential mates. The article also advised putting something soft, like foam rubber, over the spot to discourage the woodpecker. I had to laugh at the image of me climbing to the top of the telephone pole to act on this advice. Besides I like the sound of that rat-a-tat-tat, tapping. It is comforting, a sound of progress being made. Maybe only the small secret  progress of one small bird (I’m guessing a Downy woodpecker), but progress all the same. You have to take your reassurances where you find them.

 

Radioactive Prometheus... How Apropos

2008

Installation:

Spoken Word Narrative 2

Narrative 2 2:00 min., 431 words.
The peony is blooming. It reminds me of a Summer when another version of myself lived on a palatial estate with a circular drive lined in hundreds of pink and magenta peonies, framed by a row of giant purple globe thistle. A quarter mile semi-circumference of floriferous wonder. The eyes pushed out of the mulch, followed by the unfurling of scalloped leaves, and then the swelling of three fat buds. Over the next week I watched the ants crawling over the buds, eating sap, and tickling them open. My grandmother, who I called Nanny, had wonderful gardens. Not wondrous, like the opulent excess and grandeur of those on palatial estates, but wonderful with the simple elegance of a country garden, made opulent by the fact that it stood in stark contrast to the acres of tomatoes, watermelon and peas. Negotiated beauty against fields of function. One summer the watermelon withered in a drought and the farm only made it on my grandfather’s prescient decision to plant peanuts instead of peas. Nanny’s roses were beautiful that summer, blooming in masses, and thanks to the dry weather, the foliage was without a trace of black spot; a healthy glossy green. I sometimes wonder how melons wither while roses thrive. Remembering my Grandfather’s practical patterns, I can’t imagine conversations ending in favor of frivolity. Perhaps the arguments were not made with words. Negotiated beauty is one manner of love. Nanny never grew peonies that I know of and I am saddened to think that she missed such a wonderful opportunity for negotiations. Once, after my grandfather was long buried and Nanny was well into her mid-eighties I was staying with her at the farm and was awakened to the sound of gun shots. I struggled into my jeans and stumbled into the living room; confused. Nanny passed me in the moonlight, moving from the porch back into the house. In passing she whispered, ’woodpecker’ by way of explanation. The next morning I walked down the drive under the archway of black walnut trees towards the mailbox down past the cattle-guard. To my surprise I found the stiffened form of a fallen woodpecker lying among the bluebonnets in the grass. It was silently sleeping with the clean wound of a 25-caliber bullet standing in sharp contrast to the splendid red plumage of its head, as though marked from birth for this final moment in passing. I asked her over breakfast if she had hit the woodpecker. She claimed she was only trying to scare it away. I didn’t tell her how well she had succeeded.

 

Radioactive Prometheus... How Apropos

2008

Installation:

Spoken Word Narrative 3

Spoken Word Narrative 3     1:55 min., 265 words.
My relationship with my father has always been easy. Easy in the manner of things hardly known and never missed. It was more difficult for my younger brother John-David, who  longed for the father of his imagination with no real experience of our father in real life. John was young when our parents divorced. I was young as well, but I have an old soul and no patience for fools. I occasionally see my Father in passing, and we are always polite. He has no interest in me, or at least no more than he does for any stranger, and I have no expectations for him. Actually, quite a bit less than I do for most strangers. It is an easy peace. In an odd way we understand that there simply isn’t any more, and nothing to build it with or to build it on. No more desire to spend our precious little time fashioning a foundation of trust that simply won’t be honored with love. Last time I saw him, we  had a long conversation on the occasion of the death of his sister. I said, “I’m sorry”. “Thank you,” he replied. John has a long dream in which that conversation is reversed. In his dream, it is as if he were living his life backwards, back from fatherhood, to college, to high school and adolescence and ending in early childhood facing his version of our father. This oft dreamt for version he calls dad, who turns to John-David and  says “I’m sorry”, to which John simultaneously replies with both “Thank” and “Fuck you.”

Radioactive Prometheus... How Apropos

2008

Installation:

Spoken Word Narrative 4

Back to Collin Williams' portfolio page.

Narrative 4 3:00 min., 391 words.
The woodpecker’s ‘drumming’ must have worked. Today there were two woodpeckers, the original pounding away inside the telephone pole, and another warily watching from the telephone line. I warily eye him with suspicion- for surely this is the drummed up mate. Maybe there will be babies. What a way to begin life - blind, unaware of your predicament, precariously perched atop a telephone pole. Tiny mouths gaping open, perpetually protesting the powerful focused need deep in the center of the boundary that is their growing awareness of themselves. A chorus of hunger, never satiated, nor satisfied. As I am cutting the grass I find one fallen, lying rigid near the base of the pole, the too soft feathers barely covering the translucent skin. The mouth still, but gaping open, still- a silent tunnel for the ants who find their way to the tender parts and of course, back out with their bounty of flesh. Soon they are thick on the tiny body, an ordered frenzy busy doing the work of feeding their own on the woodpecker’s misfortune. Watching this spectacle I think of an episode of Woody Woodpecker, too oft repeated in my youth. Ha, ha, ha, haw, ha…ha, ha, ha, haw, ha…haw, haw ,haw, ha. The signature laugh, common at school but coming at any occasion and from anywhere. Around the block, at birthday parties or in grocery stores from strangers. The confusion on John-David’s face, followed by the rising blood blush, always threatening to rival his fire engine red hair. I wonder why I wouldn’t protect him. At first he would cry, but when tears failed, blows followed. Big comical round-houses, that lost all humor when they landed, exploding torrents of hot blood. Bloody plumes sprayed like red plumage across white linoleum tiles. Clean up on aisle four. They say that redheads are naturally ‘fiery’, but I have only witnessed the making of fire. I try to recall the story of Prometheus, but muddle it in the effort. Instead, I remember an image that I saw in the newspaper some years ago, in the late 80’s, after Chernobyl. Across from the reactor, in a public park, there was a monolithic sculpture of Prometheus receiving fire from the gods. The most conservative estimates speculate that the area immediately surrounding the reactor will remain ‘hot’ for the next 300-900 years. Radioactive Prometheus...how apropos.