Scott Duncan

Is that what he meant?

A location where Pasolini shot Uccellacci e uccelini, featuring Ninetto, Totò, and a talking crow

Monte Cucco is in the outskirts of Rome, bordered by the Roma-Fiumicino Highway to the south, and Viale Isaaco Newton to the east. The dynamics of automotive traffic meet with sheepdogs, shepherds, crows, sheep and abandoned buildings. In the distance is EUR. A perfect location for a discussion about land use, relationships between fathers and sons, the role ideology plays in shaping a personality, speaking to animals and smelling the earth.

You can see this location at CinemaRoma.eu.

Opening October 21, 2009 at Axenéo7.

Global Prosperity is a videographic exploration of the ports of Los Angeles, Rotterdam, Montreal and Vancouver. Using long cinematic tracking shots to capture port terminals and the goods, machinery and workers in them, I am asking the viewer to consider the scale and complexity of the modern sea port. The extract below is of sulphur stacks, shot at Pacific Coast Terminals in Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada.

Pacific Coast Terminals from scott duncan on Vimeo.

I returned home early this morning and on the front lawn were five crows, near the vegetable patch. I was overcome with a sudden but brief sense of dread. Not because the crows were eating the vegetables, but because they were crows, beautiful and black, on the green lawn covered in drying cut grass. I noticed them through the pines, and then as I turned into the driveway, they rose into the air, first into the pines, and then across the road. Later my neighbour said: did you see the young crow? I said: no. She said: I didn’t see it either, but I heard it. It has a special high screetching caw. Later still I heard the high screeching caw and ran down to the yard to see the young crow. I couldn’t tell, or perhaps the young crow left before the others. I hoped, almost against hope, that the crow had fallen to the ground below the pine trees – or perhaps was in a nest in the pine tree! but it did not present itself or I couldn’t find it. I sent the dog into the yard to keep the crows away from the vegetable patch.

Ontario recently banned the use of pesticides throughout the province, excluding golf courses. I am thinking about this as I drive past a local course (as far as I know they aren’t banned anywhere in Quebec). Thinking about whether golf courses use pesticides all over the course, or whether they reserve the chemicals for the flat space around the holes. As you can see, I’m not a golfer. I don’t even know what that space is called. The green?

I thought also of a twit interviewed on the news who was against the ban on private property because he used pesticides to kill earthworms under his lawn. “The raccoons dig up the earthworms, tearing apart my lawn.” So much for a patch of wilderness in his backyard.

And as I’m thinking these things, five crows lifted off from the course. They had been standing in a more or less straight line. Four flew away from the road, over the course. The fifth flew toward my car, and used the air the car pushed away as it moved forward to rise above me, twisting toward the course. As a visual artist, I wish I could show you what this looked like: five crows in a line, lifting into a dark grey sky, over a bright green golf course. The thoughts and the flights took about two seconds. The trees lining the roadside. The sand pit. The pond. The asphalt.

Another shot of this bird in the Vancouver area, from Mark Dixon Macdonald.