Paradox is a video installation and series of color photographs. The project was produced in Uranvan, Colorado, a town that was a source for uranium used in the atomic bombs detonated over Japan. Filmed in 2003 as the United States was fighting an extended war in Afghanistan and beginning a war in Iraq; Paradox imagines alternatives to the continuum of violence in communities that supply labor and raw materials for the military industrial complex.

Paradox is a project made in the vicinity of several historical uranium mining sites in Colorado. The video's mythopoetic documentary structure depicts collaborations with non-actors from the communities around Uravan, Colorado. One performance presents the artists’ collaboration with two morticians; one films as the other washes and paints the artist's body gold. In another performance a gilt box is carried around the high school football field, driven to an abandoned mine, and left in an interior shaft.

Paradox
1 channel SD video installation
7 color photographs
dimensions variable
David Kelley
©2005

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