One of the things I liked best about The C5 Landscape Initiative at sf Camerawork Gallery is the imaginative and compelling variety of installation formats. Despite the heavy theoretical bent of their work and much of its peformative, ephemeral nature (see C5 and the Path More Or Less Taken), the installation is a model of what is possible when artists consider the gallery as an opportunity for presentation not a barrier.
Starting at the top of the stairs with Every Damn Route, a plot of all the GPS data from the three different projects of the initiative - and no, they did not carry the suitcases to the summits of Mount Shasta and Mount Fuji, but they did carry up the foam models sitting in them - there are a series of accessible installations of provocative work.
The Other Path is represented by hanging glass plate with laser cut maps of California and China. Projected onto the glass are a series of GPS points with a corresponding video narrative for each trip. The shadow / projection onto the wall behind the glass adds an element of presence to the work.
For The Anaologous Landscape, aluminum models - lovingly sanded and waxed by Joel Slayton - of Mount Fuji and Mount Shasta stand at table height in front of a projection of the 3D data used to build the models, with a time-based unfolding of the route C5 took to climb each analogous landscape using their actual GPS data from the climb.
A series of PDAs display texts and images and animations made as field mediations during the different projects.
Not pictured is the installation of The Perfect View, which included Jack Toolin's motorcycle he road 12,000 miles to find and photograph the perfect views, and a room with backpacks and gear hanging on the wall, and the C5 GPS Media Player, which C5 developed to present a synched visual-data record of their trips.
Below are Marisa Olsen, the initiating curator of the exhibition, and Joel Slayton, founder of C5.
