White Space (Rushmore) explores the potential of the natural environment to supersede the constructed landscape of Mount Rushmore and, through that reclamation, re-imagine our experience within that space. This footage is edited from a 15 minute recording made on the main viewing platform. For a period of several hours around the time the video was recorded, the weather conditions obscured the visibility of the monument and visitors to the site that morning observed an empty expanse of white fog.

In the absence of the expected spectacle, the place fundamentally transformed from a tourist site into an uncanny no-place. The steady flow of people who had come to interact with a pre-configured attraction instead misguidedly navigated the site. In the relationship between the viewer and the erased spectacle, there was a common impulse to find a way to negotiate a rational experience from what seemed like an absurd ability of nature to redirect a programmed interaction with the landscape.

© 2008