Primordial Attending is a three-channel, experimental film that explores the timescales around Summer Lake in Lake County, Oregon, United States. Historical and contemporary research, site-specific footage, and poetry from three artists (Amanda Lichtenberg, Eric Magrane, and Jolie Kaytes)* are combined with a soundscape created from field recordings taken within the alkaline waters of Summer Lake and the fissured cracks of the mudflats known as the playa. Writing and recording was completed at PLAYA Summer Lake Artist Residency.
Summer Lake is a remnant of the ancient Lake Chewaucan, from the Pleistocene era, ~13,000 years ago. Pleistocene-era waves also created the nearby Paisley Caves, where there is archaeological evidence of the oldest definitively-dated human presence in North America. The Northern Paiute people are their descendants, and the original stewards of this ancient lakebed. Though it remains one of the least-known in the history of the genocidal war on Indigenous people, the deadliest conflict in the American West was the war on the Northern Paiute from 1864–1868, on territory that includes modern-day Lake County.
Today, Summer Lake receives a seasonal influx of water from the Ana River, which is increasingly diverted to irrigate Lake County’s growing agricultural focus on alfalfa hay. Christmas Valley in Lake County exports the most alfalfa hay in the region, reaching an international market. The bright-green crop grows in stark contrast to the high-desert’s natural landscape, threatening the ecosystem’s future.
*Poem Excerpts (Existing in Multitudes):
A thousand days in these days.
…
“Here” is also a distance.
Meaning I’m farther from myself today, or I’m getting closer.
(Excerpt from Amanda Lichtenberg)
Think “go with your gut” and repeat after me:
I am mostly microbial flora.
(Excerpt from Eric Magrane)
Playa…marked by an ephemeral lake
Collects the undoings of mountains.
(Excerpt from Jolie Kaytes)
