One-Week Walden, 2006
HD Digital Video, TRT: 10:28
One-Week Walden takes the form of a video diary documenting my attempt to recreate a Walden-like retreat during a week-long stay in a pop-up camper parked in my father’s backyard in Upstate New York. As the implausibility of the endeavor becomes increasingly apparent and my ambitions grow more tempered, the piece unfolds into a layered narrative of unvarnished thoughts and feelings. Interwoven with journal-style reflections are improvised dramatizations and dance sequences drawn from fantasies of what I had hoped might occur. The video was partly inspired by Thoreau’s seeming lack of self-doubt—and perhaps by his impulse to cast his vision of stoic simplicity as an idealized, heroic endeavor. In contrast, One-Week Walden veers into satire, offering a messy, unresolved, and anticlimactic counterpoint—an exploration of failure, fantasy, and the unruly texture of lived experience.
Ken Johnson, Review: Jennifer Sullivan ‘One-Week Walden’, The New York Times, December 10, 2010
