Mother Shipton’s Prophecy, 2022
Single-channel video, 16x9, color
Stereo sound
14:35
Synopsis
Four evocations of human presence during apocryphal end-moments.
1. Tide, thunder, snow, footsteps
Cave Point, Wisconsin, December 2017
2. Spring peeper, pickerel frog, car
Berkshire, New York, May 2011
3. Transmission tower, freeway, helicopter
Elsmere Canyon, California, August 2021
4. Flock, crows, highway, airplane
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, February 2015
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“Mother Shipton” was born in a Yorkshire cave in 1488, cackling to stop the thunder above. She prophesied the ascent of Henry VIII, the fall of the Catholic Church, the Great Fire of London, the advent of automobiles and submarines, and the end of the world in 1881. Or 1991.
Charles Hindley published an 1862 chapbook collection of her predictions, confessing in 1873 to fabricating those pointing to his present time. Identical end-of-the-world predictions of “Mother Shipman” were published in the Chicago Inter-Ocean in 1878, and a song version collected in Wisconsin in the early 20th Century.
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Four sonic environments contextualized via animations derived from sunlight glinting off Lake Michigan.
Click any image for enlarged slideshow.
Screenings and exhibitions
VASTLAB, Los Angeles, November 4, 2022
Denver Underground Film Festival, November 15, 2022