Plainsong: The Video of Mary Lucier

The Plains of Sweet Regret, Mary Lucier's five­channel, 18-minute video installation, was com­missioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art in spring 2001 as part of its larger "Emptying Out of the Plains" initiative. The Plains consists of four large-screen video projections, two plasma screens and composer Earl Howard's rich surround sound­track, and invokes classic images of the empty landscapes of America's Great Plains. lt's all there: Charles Sheeler's grain elevators, Edward Hopper's lonely farmhouses, Dorothea Lange's photographs and Pare Lorentz's documentary films of the Dust Bowl. Yet Lucier recasts the harsh weather and stark terrain, endlessly blowing winds and the engulfing prairie, into a vibrant and alive place. A place still responsive to human desire, still ca­pable of accommodating human scale despite the ruins she finds standing eloquent guard to lives once lived.