Sam Durant | 
About Corn
"Corn is based
on my memory of Holt and Smithson's film Swamp. I saw Swamp maybe 15 years
ago. I have a vague memory of the film's details. I remember tall reeds
in a New Jersey marsh falling forward as the camera advances through them
for a long time. There is a voice seeming to guide the camera through the
reeds. I think Nancy Holt holds the camera, blind folded with Smithson walking
behind her giving her directions or it could be the other way around. The
film's sound is interesting.
While in Ohio one summer Andrea and I were planning a collaborative project
based on a video by Linda Benglis and Robert Morris called Exchange. So
we were thinking about our relationship to some of the collaborative works
made during the sixties and seventies. One day it occurred to me that we
were very close to Kent State and surrounded by corn fields. My associations
with the swamps and marshes of the east coast have definitely been influenced
by the movies I saw as a kid ("the Blob", "Swamp Thing",
"Creature from the Black Lagoon", etc.). After we shot Corn I
started to think about the cornfields in the same way"
Sam Durant
