Wednesday, May 25, 2011

"It started with a ride to the fields, a long ride."

"Sometimes I wondered how we looked from a distance; a group of haggard looking men in worn boots, haphazardly marching from one side of the field to the other. Unclear for who or where to, never asking why, always trying to do as we were told."

"Whenever I pass by these fields again, I am always briefly surprised that there are no groups of men, marching. That nobody sits where the field meets the road, happily drinking their beer. That the only thing left is the field itself, the sun, some traces of us here and there. An empty pack of cigarettes. A button. A shell casing. A memory."

Some stories are hard to be discovered, hidden in places, reluctant to be told. Then, when you find them, you can hardly stop chasing them, running after the countless traces they leave on the ground.

Michael de Kooter lost himself in the Yucca Valley, a journey between truth and fiction that has just started, a chain of deceiving memories where men wander through a land they don't recognize anymore, fighting an invisible enemy who is far more dangerous than the outlaws they used to meet along their way.

The journey will continue, and what is only a short preview hidden behind some scratch-off silver ink will grow, unfold and reveal the story of people and places now covered by the dust of time.

"...the only thing left is the field itself, the sun, some traces of us here and there".

An old collapsed building, an abandoned church, a dry and empty land. Are they from the same place? What did they use to be like, what are they now?

There is plenty to find inside the Yucca Valley, stay tuned for more over the following months.

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