Kate Burnet & Dan Woerner

Nevermind The High Sign. 2009. Digital video, 4m30s from KATE BURNET & DAN WOERNER

KATE BURNET and DAN WOERNER make videos and installations and sometimes objects that graft our memories of the past and our prospects for the future from fragments of pop culture and other detritus. They are interested in creating environments that change our sense of reality while displacing us bodily as well as telling stories that are as old as dirt.

Interpreted from the 1956 short play, “Act Without Words” by SAMUEL BECKETT ,” Nevermind The High Sign” utilizes the pantomime format to tell a story about a character who is stranded in the desert and has only his dim-witted instincts to survive. Various props are lowered, they dangle in front of him only to be retrieved in a Buster Keaton meets Tantalus fashion. He plays the game despite his obvious handicaps and shortcomings. He reaches overhead and examines the tools presented to him only to have the futility of the situation prevail. Inevitably he contemplates suicide, but eventually he succumbs either in defeat or rebellion and stares straight ahead.

KATE BURNET and DAN WOERNER live and work at the east entrance of the 59th Street Bridge in New York and the desert of west Texas on the Terlingua Ranch.



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