Deborah Stratman, …These Blazeing Starrs! | 2011 | 14min |16mm | USA
Ever since comets have been recorded, they have augured catastrophe, messiahs, upheaval and end times. …These Blazeing Starrs! is a short film about these meteoric ice-cored fireballs and their historic ties to divination. The film combines imagery of 15th-18th century European broadsides with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory footage. The modern empirical desire to probe and measure is juxtaposed against older methods, when stargazers translated the sky for predictions of human folly. These days, comets are understood as time capsules harboring elemental information about the formation of our solar system. We smash rockets into them to read spectral signatures. In a sense, they remain oracles – it is just the manner of divination that has changed.
…These Blazeing Starrs!
Threaten the World
with Famine, Plague, & Warrs:
To Princes, Death:
to Kingdoms, many Crosses:
To all Estates, inevitable Losses!
To Herds-men, Rot’
to Plowmen, haples Seasons:
To Saylors, Storms;
to Cittyes, Civil Treasons.
- Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, 1578
Saturday June 25 8pm
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Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker interested in landscapes and systems. Her recent work has been concerned with manifest destiny, faith, freedom, sonic warfare and paranormal occurrences in the information age. She has exhibited internationally at venues including MoMA, Pompidou, Hammer Museum, the Whitney Biennial and festivals including Sundance, Viennale, Oberhausen and Rotterdam. Deborah is the recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships and teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
