The Wisconsin Project: Werner Herzog

18.9.12

Kwik Trip, Sheboygan, WI

Kwik Trip, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, October 11, 2010

Kwik Trip, Menasha Avenue, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, September 26, 2010

Found: "Adams DX Truck Stop and Restaurant", located on I-90 and U.S. Highway 51, Madison, Wisconsin" copyright Dexter Press, circa 1960 (featured as a location in Werner Herzog's 1977 film "Stroszek")

The culture of eating, drinking, and refreshing in the age of the motor vehicles evolved from the full-service truck stop with restaurant (open 24 hours, seats 100, delicious food, mechanics on duty) such as the Adams DX, infamous for its appearance in Werner Herzog's Strozek. Now there's the Kwik Trip here in Wisconsin, established in 1965 and spreading into Iowa and Minnesota. It offers the 24/7 convenient consumption experience for motorists that the old truck stops once did. Besides gas, there's a range of food (from onions to Greek yogurt), a bakery, a dairy, hot coffee, lottery tickets, newspapers, and smokes. The Kwik Trip became the hub in the neighborhood near our studio by the mid-1990s. In the late 1980s, there were still a couple grocery stores within walking distance, a food co-op, news and video store, and there wasn't a lottery. All that's gone now and the Kwik Trip has filled the void, a lifestyle.

3.7.12

Werner Herzog in Plainfield, Wisconsin

The mythic portrayal of Wisconsin in Werner Herzog’s Stroczek (1977) communicates German the filmmaker's ruminations on solitude, pain and extreme landscapes that mirror an inner state. Shot in Berlin and Plainfield, the film critiques the delusion of the American Dream. By dwelling on the excruciating details of a mobile home auction framed by the cold brown November landscape of central Wisconsin, we see the shivering resolve of the locals and the heartlessness of the bankers. Beer soaked, Stroczek gets the news that his home will be repossessed as the temperatures plummet. Wisconsin locals clad in plaid and orange hunting regalia shuffle their feet to keep warm as the auctioneer disposes of Stroczek's TV and the contents of his dream home.

THE WISCONSIN PROJECT

Our research-driven Wisconsin Project contemplates the rooted-ness and state-of-mind resulting from inhabiting a single place, our native Wisconsin, for a long time. Through critiquing postcard views both made and found, we learn a great deal about past and present Wisconsin. We began making postcard views of the places immediately around our studio and on our drives around Wisconsin in about 2008. We use the vintage postcard film format and print the cards in palladium and cyanotype. By communicating details of a specific place, seeming to register only marginally on the national radar, the project seeks to bring audiences into a Wisconsin mental space. Some in the art world would argue that the Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, makes for banal “fly over” subject matter. Our project challenges that by finding meaning in the ordinary and inviting audiences to examine, dialog, and reflect on the particular emotional quality of the idiosyncrasies of place and the perceptions of those both inside and outside of it. Sometimes distant memories are involved and a longing for a time now gone. Wisconsin’s glacier inflected landscape and proximity to the Great Lakes creates an exotic arena for living that informs our project. The life cycle plays out and rural and urban ruins serve as monuments to existences as people, places, and ideas surface then vanish. Ultimately, we aim to grapple with complex perceptions of Wisconsin ranging from nostalgic, romantic, and idealized--as depicted on myriad real photo postcard and standard tourist postcards--to mysterious, dark, and Gothic as conveyed in works of art and literature such as Michael Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip" book and Werner Herzog's "Stroszek" film. The project culminated in a residency with workshops and community collaborations and the installation "We Go From Where We Know" at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center 10.13.2013-3.7.2014 and later the Harvestore Bandshell for Fermentation Fest in 10.2014. The blog continues the exploration of postcards.