Zachary Norman: This Storm is What We Call Progress

Drawing on the work of artists such as French filmmaker Chris Marker, Norman uses the documentary film structure as a departure point for exploring intersections between poetry, philosophy, environmentalism, eschatology, Internet culture, Marxist geography, psychoanalysis, and post-Fordist labor practices. Through the use of original footage shot in and around the Northwest Quadrant of Salt Lake City, appropriated YouTube clips, and 3D rendered animations, Norman’s work provides a glimpse of what he calls “the dystopian wasteland towards which the realization of the Utah Inland Port inevitably leads us.”
The Utah Inland Port is a proposed dry port located in the “Northwest Quadrant” of Salt Lake City. According to Norman, “the widespread use of the term ‘Northwest Quadrant’ by developers and lawmakers in proposals and plans demonstrates their inability to make even nomenclatural concessions to the land, framing the space as a homogeneous ‘quadrant’ instead of a biodiverse, fluid, and heterogeneous space.”