Tesuque

Visual data collected one frame a minute, 24 hours a day for 14 months, produced over 600,000 images that were edited into the final version of Tesuque: Day & Night.

“Coit freely traverses time, purposefully speeding it up and achieving a number of effects at once…Beautifully recorded and skillfully edited, Tesuque offers a visual poem that reminds us not only of nature’s power to go on across and beyond time but also of the complexities and pluralities of the world beyond the human. The rain falls against a pool, the wind rustles in the leaves, birds and insects alike chirp, and coyotes howl, all producing sounds that remind us that we are outnumbered guests on the planet that we foolishly imagine we control. In that sense, the film, like the little pool that it records, is a small, man-made oasis that offers an homage to the much larger and majestic earth and sky for which the film seems to express gratitude.” - Jennie Hirsh, from “Before and After Language: The Art of Madelin Coit”

Pre-sunrise greys before first light instigated discussions between birds or bugs announcing the particular, impending day. Cyclic modulation of light and wind, momentary shifting temperature, moisture, and other variables dictated the chatter. During the process of working on the video, it became clear that each population has a unique tone and rhythm: one can identify what belongs to Tesuque, NM in general, and to this garden specifically. The audio was recorded and reduced to waveform for the sound piece Tesque: Waveform.

“Tesuque Waveform [is] an abstract video whose aesthetic, void of physical landscape, translates the voices of nature’s creatures into animated soundwaves, much like an EKG represents a human heartbeat. By isolating sound from its source, the work disorients the viewer trained to privilege the visual over the sonic while reminding her to listen.” - Jennie Hirsh, from “Before and After Language: The Art of Madelin Coit”