Jefferson's Monuments patiently inventories four controversial dams slated for removal on California’s and Oregon’s mighty Klamath River. After more than 20 years of activism by tribal groups, scientists, activists, and fisherfolk, dismantling these dams will begin in 2023. This effort successfully leveraged direct action and diplomacy, traditional ecological knowledge and the biological sciences, and has deftly destabilized the hegemonic colonial sovereignty long imposed on one particularly compelling infrastructural landscape. Jefferson's Monuments is a meditative, moving image epitaph for these unexpectedly grand and undeniably problematic monuments in their dramatic Cascade Range environment. (© 2010, running time: 7.5 minutes.)
Installation views of Jefferson's Monuments at the Shifting Baselines exhibition (Santa Fe Art Institute, 2013)