“I can see a little further ahead…” is a video essay, audio installation, and set of transferred images based on materials recorded in the Alps in 2022-23.
What results is a daydream on inbetween-ness, becoming, the desire to leave one’s body, and the experiences of love, loss, bewilderment, and longing that holds a spirit “in the drift.”
Essay
| Start Time | End Time | Text |
| 00:00:32:10 | 00:00:44:01 | The signs on the “Gletscherstein”—or glacier stone—on the Goscheneralp. |
| 00:00:49:57 | 00:00:59:55 | The stone, located at the foot of a moraine at the entrance to the Winter Glacier Valley, bears a number of house symbols and initials. |
| 00:01:01:16 | 00:01:11:08 | These markings also include the two years 1660 and 1767. |
| 00:01:12:04 | 00:01:22:50 | These most likely refer to years in which a religious pilgrimage was carried out in an attempt to stop the advancing glacier and protect the pastures. |
| 00:01:29:09 | 00:01:39:06 | Instructions. |
| 00:01:46:41 | 00:01:57:48 | Modern records of Alpine glacier expansion |
| 00:01:58:29 | 00:02:08:49 | The first high point of the glaciers in the upper Vallée de Chamonix was recorded in 1610—for the Glacier de Tour and Glacier d’Argentière. |
| 00:02:09:10 | 00:02:19:13 | In 1644, a religious procession to curb the danger of glaciers took place there. |
| 00:02:19:43 | 00:02:30:05 | These glacier banishments—often blessed by the Vatican—were characteristic of glacier expansion phases. |
| 00:02:31:36 | 00:02:40:20 | A procession to the Mer de Glace in 1643-44 had the same goal: |
| 00:02:40:55 | 00:02:50:46 | Around 1650, the Fiescher and Great Aletsch glaciers reached their maximum size. |
| 00:02:51:06 | 00:03:00:51 | A priest from Leuk was commissioned to banish the Fiescher glacier through sacred ceremonies. A marker reads: |
| 00:03:01:06 | 00:03:11:07 | “In 1652, the Reverend Michel Felliser von Leick died here 18 months ago. He conjured up the ghost in the Viescher Glacier, according to which the glacier posed.” |
| 00:03:19:42 | 00:03:30:15 | In September 1653, one procession to the Aletsch Glacier led by two Jesuit priests was recorded in the book “Historia Collegii Societatis Jesu Brigae in Vallesia.” |
| 00:03:30:46 | 00:03:41:14 | Apparently this served its purpose. Aletsch has no longer advanced any further. |
| 00:04:12:34 | 00:04:22:42 | Two-thirds of the ice volume in the Alps has vanished since 1850. On average, Swiss glaciers now retreat about 10 meters a year. |
| 00:04:36:41 | 00:04:48:36 | In 2009, the Bishop of Sion petitioned the Vatican to authorize a change in the local Valais processional liturgy (which still took place.) |
| 00:04:49:16 | 00:04:59:53 | The liturgical change would permit villagers, who now faced the risks of flooding and a loss of tourist income, to instead pray for the Aletsch glacier to stop shrinking. |
| 00:05:14:31 | 00:05:24:39 | For several years now, locals have installed fleece blankets on the Rhone glacier in an attempt to reduce its melting. |
| 00:05:28:34 | 00:05:38:18 | It’s about 70% effective. |
| 00:05:44:42 | 00:05:55:37 | In 2018, photographers Simon Norfolk and Klaus Thymann created a series of images titled “Shroud” displaying the blanket-wrapped ice. |
| 00:06:27:48 | 00:06:37:08 | Therefore, on those occasions when I am engulfed, it is because there is no longer any place for me anywhere, not even in death. |
| 00:06:37:22 | 00:06:46:48 | The image of the other—to which I was glued, on which I lived—no longer exists; |
| 00:06:47:04 | 00:06:56:25 | sometimes this is a (futile) catastrophe which seems to remove the image forever, |
| 00:06:56:42 | 00:07:05:52 | sometimes it is an excessive happiness which enables me to unite with the image; |
| 00:07:06:17 | 00:07:15:48 | in any case, severed or united, dissolved or discrete, I am nowhere gathered together; |
| 00:07:16:03 | 00:07:26:16 | opposite, neither your nor me, nor death, nor anything else to talk to. |
| 00:07:26:49 | 00:07:29:48 | (Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse.) |
| 00:07:43:15 | 00:07:54:14 | I had imagined that the mountains were hollow. |
| 00:08:09:09 | 00:08:19:49 | In WWII, the Swiss would store their limited fleet of fighter planes in the mountains. Like big garages. |
| 00:08:26:00 | 00:08:37:45 | On April 1, 2014, the EPFL posted results of a geological scan of the Matterhorn. The investigation began after local goat farmers reported that their flocks had been disappearing into the deep mountain crevasses. |
| 00:08:38:27 | 00:08:48:53 | The study revealed that the mountain was hollowing out inside, and would eventually implode. |
| 00:08:54:45 | 00:09:05:06 | I later found out that the article was an April Fool’s joke, a detail I’d lost in translation. |
| 00:09:36:24 | 00:09:46:08 | The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a set of instructions you must read aloud to the deceased person, as they do not know they have died. |
| 00:09:46:28 | 00:09:59:16 | Hearing is the last bodily sense available to the soul. |
| 00:10:36:54 | 00:10:47:04 | The Gotthard Tunnel is ten miles long. |
| 00:10:47:04 | 00:10:55:49 | In 2016, a separate rail and freight tunnel opened—Gotthard Base Tunnel. It runs 35 miles long. |
| 00:11:07:07 | 00:11:22:19 | Both run through the Gotthard Massif, or Saint-Gotthard Massif, an Alpine mountain range at the border of four cantons: Valais, Ticino, Uri, and Graubünden. |
| 00:11:24:54 | 00:11:36:52 | 1. French: Saint-Gothard Massif. 2. German: Gotthardmassiv or Sankt-Gotthard-Massiv. 3. Italian: Massiccio del San Gottardo. 4. Romansh: Massiv dal Gottard. |
| 00:11:50:52 | 00:12:04:27 | The tunnel has its own radio station. It alerts drivers of conditions, reminds them they’re in a tunnel, and indicates that the emergency exits are every 300 meters. |
| 00:12:22:48 | 00:12:37:18 | These emergency passages out of Gotthard tunnel lead to another smaller, parallel tunnel called a SiSto. |
| 00:12:40:14 | 00:12:48:51 | A SiSto has its own dedicated infrastructure, communications, and monitoring. |
| 00:12:52:44 | 00:13:02:52 | It also has increased air pressure to keep out fire and smoke. |
| 00:13:14:57 | 00:13:23:41 | Sometimes you can even find small evacuation vehicles in the SiSto. |
| 00:13:24:57 | 00:13:30:36 | Little karts. |
| 00:13:39:16 | 00:13:47:16 | Sometimes. |
| 00:13:47:40 | 00:14:01:50 | Sometimes I think about things that just disappear. |
| 00:14:09:23 | 00:14:19:31 | Where did the thing go? |
| 00:14:23:56 | 00:14:34:04 | Where did she go? |
| 00:14:37:17 | 00:14:42:48 | Where did whatever we just had, |
| 00:14:42:48 | 00:14:47:51 | I just saw it, |
| 00:14:47:51 | 00:14:50:50 | it was right there, |
| 00:14:50:50 | 00:14:53:49 | I know it |
| 00:14:53:49 | 00:14:56:48 | I I I I felt it |
| 00:14:56:48 | 00:14:59:47 | I swear to god |
| 00:14:59:47 | 00:15:12:31 | where did it go? |
| 00:15:23:27 | 00:15:33:07 | In these moments of disappearance, it’s like something got sucked into a hole or through a portal in front of me. |
| 00:15:36:53 | 00:15:47:28 | There is a feeling of loss, yes, but that term alone doesn’t encompass the bewilderment. |
| 00:15:48:36 | 00:16:04:47 | Like at any time, some vanished love of mine may come careening back through my field of vision on a fucking go-kart |
| 00:16:04:47 | 00:16:13:14 | or something equally as ridiculous as the fact of love’s disappearance to begin with. |
| 00:16:36:30 | 00:16:45:15 | Melting is slower, but also, scale is relative. |
| 00:16:46:23 | 00:16:51:28 | Good thing time doesn’t exist. |
| 00:16:56:17 | 00:16:59:16 | I saw her. |
| 00:17:01:05 | 00:17:04:44 | And now I don’t see her. |
| 00:17:04:50 | 00:17:09:55 | I don’t feel her. |
| 00:17:17:40 | 00:17:23:53 | I keep listening for a sound in the house. |
| 00:17:25:40 | 00:17:31:27 | Everything I hear is always attributable to something else. |
| 00:17:38:05 | 00:17:58:21 | [electromagnetic buzzing] |
| 00:18:56:14 | 00:18:59:13 | Barthes, again: |
| 00:19:01:02 | 00:19:11:57 | |
| 00:19:15:07 | 00:19:21:04 | This morning (in the country), the weather is mild, overcast. |
| 00:19:21:04 | 00:19:26:07 | I am suffering (from some incident). |
| 00:19:28:10 | 00:19:31:09 | The notion of suicide occurs to me, pure of any resentment (not blackmailing anyone); |
| 00:19:31:13 | 00:19:35:12 | an insipid notion; |
| 00:19:36:38 | 00:19:40:03 | it alters nothing (“breaks” nothing), |
| 00:19:40:03 | 00:19:45:06 | matches the color (the silence, the desolation) of this morning. |
| 00:19:51:37 | 00:19:54:58 | Another day, in the rain, we’re waiting for the boat at the lake; |
| 00:19:54:58 | 00:20:00:56 | from happiness, this time, the same outburst of annihilation sweeps through me. |
| 00:20:10:31 | 00:20:15:33 | This is how it happens sometimes, misery or joy engulfs me, without any particular tumult ensuing, nor any pathos: |
| 00:20:16:42 | 00:20:19:41 | I am dissolved, not dismembered; |
| 00:20:19:41 | 00:20:25:50 | I fall, I flow, I melt. |
| 00:20:36:46 | 00:20:42:22 | Such thoughts—grazed, touched, tests (the way you test the water with your foot)—can recur. |
| 00:20:47:06 | 00:20:50:05 | Nothing solemn about them. |
| 00:20:53:09 | 00:21:01:22 | This is exactly what gentleness is. |
| 00:23:13:42 | 00:23:28:46 | If there be no corpse, then the bed or the seat to which the deceased had been accustomed should be occupied by the reader [of the book], who ought to expound the power of the Truth. |
| 00:23:29:09 | 00:23:43:33 | Then, summoning the spirit of the deceased, imagine it to be present there listening, and read. |
| 00:36:04:08 | 00:36:15:36 | When I hear something and can’t see it, do I know it’s there? |
| 00:36:17:23 | 00:36:27:50 | When I see something but don’t feel it, do I know it’s really there? |
| 00:36:32:12 | 00:36:40:13 | When I feel something but can’t touch it, or read it, or hear it, or see it … |
| 00:36:47:31 | 00:36:57:47 | Just because I don’t believe in the Rapture doesn’t mean I believe in its opposite. |
| 00:37:17:33 | 00:37:27:38 | I find little flights out of my body. |
| 00:37:37:00 | 00:37:47:16 | I want to go, too, to be with you. |
| 00:38:01:42 | 00:38:13:27 | Instead you are stuck in the hollow of my throat, I think. |
| 00:38:32:43 | 00:38:39:09 | Empty house. Hollow body. |
| 00:38:48:42 | 00:38:56:32 | It is still possible for the dead man who refuses to be born back into the world of consciousness |
| 00:38:56:32 | 00:39:06:42 | to reach the Dharmakāya by transcending the four-faced Mount Meru, provided that he does not yield to his desire to follow the ‘dim lights.’ |
| 00:39:11:35 | 00:39:21:40 | In Buddhist cosmology, Mount Meru (or Sumeru) is located at the center of the earth, but it is not seen there. |
| 00:39:35:15 | 00:39:44:35 | Visibility, legibility, audibility, sensibility… |
| 00:39:47:14 | 00:39:57:24 | Come to your senses. |
| 00:39:59:50 | 00:40:09:55 | Return to your body. Its in-between-ness. Its tension. |
| 00:40:12:02 | 00:40:19:24 | I don’t know if I’m saying this right. |
| 00:40:46:51 | 00:40:56:14 | I don’t know if I found the wind phenomenon I was looking for in these mountains, |
| 00:40:56:14 | 00:41:06:16 | except perhaps on the eve of my departure, when all my recording gear |
| 00:41:42:20 | 00:41:52:42 | In the background, inside the house, I can hear them arguing about if this wind even counts as a foehn. |
| 00:41:55:29 | 00:42:06:22 | To me, the very emergence of this friendly agitation indicates that it is, in fact, a minor foehn wind. |
| 00:42:13:02 | 00:42:23:45 | I can’t hear or understand everything they’re saying, though. |
| 00:42:26:03 | 00:42:38:06 | And I am excited by what I feel enveloping me. |
| 00:42:49:23 | 00:42:59:35 | I can see a little further ahead. |
