Breaking Ground

Breaking Ground is a photo-phonic mediation on the tale of dreams, sought and abandoned, that wends its way through the American psyche and landscape.Documentary artist Valery Lyman spent 4 years photographing and recording audio in the Bakken oilfields of North Dakota, documenting the rise of the oil industry there and the large American migration that went along with it.

Join us on October 4th-6th as these photographs are projected directly onto the machinery and structures of the Comstock Foundation’s stunning Donovan Mill while multiple sound compositions emanate, creating an immersive meditation on the cyclical nature of industry and an opportunity to explore a contemporary oil boom.These fragments add up to convey the many dreams and voices colliding in places like these for a brief moment lived all at once, as well as the echoes and remnants left behind once a boom is over.

The original documentary images are refracted and re-formed as they stretch across and texturally blend with industrial surfaces. Past and present collapse into visceral imagery, an archetypal landscape wandered by subjects and viewers alike. Let's poke holes in time and inhabit this landscape together. This work is contingent on immersion and wandering, and invites the body into the experience of film: as wanderer, visitor, archaeologist, curator.This work is not about the political or environmental implications of North Dakota’s oil boom, but about the lived experience of those who are part of it and the force of our industrial history. This work features the voices and experiences of those blue collar workers that underlay our world.Breaking Ground evokes the memory of those who once worked at the Donovan Mill, and invites the public to consider its own history in relation to other places.

The Donovan Mill is an historic silver stamp mill in Silver City, Nevada where zinc and cyanide methods for processing ore were perfected in the late 1800s, eliminating the need for poisonous mercury. With this innovation, the Donovan played a critical role in Nevada’s wealth and dominance of the silver industry for the next century.

Come rediscover and explore this exquisite site, still standing nearly complete, and an interpretation of how it connects to industrial history across America.

Breaking Ground is not a sequential performance; therefore, come anytime during exhibit hours. Wear warm clothing and good shoes, as you will be exploring a fairly raw industrial site and the terrain can be uneven. If it is difficult for you to walk or see, this may be a challenging exhibit. May not be appropriate for young children.To see more on this project visit:
www.breakinggroundexhibit.com 

Silver City, Nevada