A convention center is a holding space waiting to become, made real only by the temporary inhabitants (IT companies, auto manufacturers, democrats) who flow through it. Non-specific and unhinged from the local, it could be almost anywhere, employing the casual and vacant vernacular of large-scale meeting places:
Concrete. Glass. Info screens. Coke machines. Signage. Potted palms. Patterned carpet.
But it’s not anywhere. You are here, in the McEnery Convention Center, in the flight path to the Mineta Airport, in downtown San Jose, in the capital of Silicon Valley, surrounded by mountains, and a few miles from the sea.
One block west of the convention center is highway 87, and beneath it is the Guadalupe River, though it’s easy to miss unless you’re out for a stroll. Downtown San Jose has suffered historic flooding by this rather small river, which begins in the Santa Cruz Mountains, runs through the city, and continues on to Alviso, where it decants into the South Bay. An undulating concrete conduit, Guadalupe River Park is as beautiful a void- a space beneath and between – as the convention center:
Concrete. Pillars and overpasses. Flood lines. Wire mesh and stones. Water.
Paradoxical Sleep is a multi-channel video piece, originally sited on screens throughout the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, and also configured as stand-alone display units. Video portraits of the building and the nearby Guadalupe River mesh the two sites into a single tributary of flood and flow. The screens become magic mirrors, making visible what is invisible to the naked eye: memory, speculation, and projection.
The term “paradoxical sleep” refers to the sleep state during which the brain is active and dreaming occurs. In the unstable ecosystem of altered terrains, the river emerges anew, otherworldly and depopulated, flooding the places where you stand.
