Doug Porter: Run into Peace

With a text adapted from the writings of the controversial early 14th-century mystic Meister Eckhart, Run into Peace presents a hypnotic yet contradictory stream of images and words. Juxtaposed in flowing layers of highway landscapes, blood maps, vacant rooms, human figures, streetlights, icons and circular staircases, the images and soundtrack combine to form a repetitive, deceptively soothing sequence, a verbal-visual field into which one can sink and which induces a contemplative condition. 

Run into Peace is the first of a trilogy of videotapes by digital media/video artist Doug Porter. As befits their mode of delivery (that is, time-based media), the works deal with questions concerning the Self and Time -- questions such as: What constitutes as the Self? How does the way of experiencing Time affect the Self? How does the perception of the Self affect the experiencing of Time? Each of Porter's tapes represent three different modes of defining the Self: what he calls the PreModern "receiving" Self, the Modern "constructed" Self, and the PostModern "diffuse" self. He has completed the first and last of these tapes (the hypnotic Run into Peace and the frenentic Losing Sleep), while the middle tape (the ironic Victory over Reality) is still in progress. Each tape, however, is capable of standing on its own, and may be experienced as an individual work.