Rome International Film Festival 2008

the award-winning sculpture 'pour les enfants d'astrios et eos ii: voile,' by polymath artist/performer jonathan schork, debuted at a sculpture show in key west, florida, in the winter of 2007. 'voile' is a set of opaque sails made from 75 yrads of organza sheers, hung on a grove of steel masts 12-24 feet tall affixed on the ground to a 60' long steel spiral. during the two day installation, the sculptor had the opportunity to speak with many strangers about what they saw in the sails, the masts, the spiral, and found in these ordinary people a hunger to be heard, and a willingness to share stories of immense intimacy. this was the birthplace of 'voile: sails in the desert.' hauling the sculpture on a former school bus 4000 miles cross-country with a small film crew, he spent two weeks on the arid lakedbed of the black rock desert in northwestern nevada filming participants at burning man interacting with the sculpture, and explaining to him what they found in it. the answers were sensitive and initmate, at times wonderfully sophisticated and profound; the interactions-- by dancers, musicians, other filmmakers-- were exciting. backdropping all that humanity was the natural world-- a full moon, a windstorm, a double rainbow, the mountains-- an environment in which, however discordant a ship might have seemed, voile sailed quietly. the soundtrack by ukrainian dnd/progressive composer sergiy kindzersky, sometimes moody, sometimes kinetic, gives the surreal images of sails in the desert the feel of a feature-length music video.