All Day Long

Christopher Pavsek and Eldritch Priest
October 19 – November 4, 2026
Lobby Projection Array
SFU School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

All Day Long (32:50) is a short experimental video and sound collaboration between Christopher Pavsek and Eldritch Priest. The images and ambient sound were recorded by Pavsek on Ruh Red Road in southern Oregon near the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The sounds were created and composed by Priest some years ago as a standalone quartet for electric guitars and were then modified to work in conversation with the images and ambient sound. As with every conversation worth having there was some back and forth and the images and ambient sound were changed a bit, the music was changed a bit, and so on, and at some point the imaginary café where this conversation happened turned out the lights and we had to go.

For those who may not know: the Malheur NWR became notorious amongst creatures other than birders and birds, for whom the place was actually a happy one, when a band of right-wing militia under the leadership of Ammon Bundy occupied the refuge in January of 2016, America's annus horribilis. They were protesting the supposed illegality of federal ownership of public lands. The Bundy posse championed the case of two ranchers who had been charged with arson on federal land years before, even though those ranchers did not want the Bundy crew's help. This film has nothing really to do with the occupation, but it's hard not to wonder what might be perceived in a perpetually airborne flock of swallows if we inhabitants of 2026 could only "read the birds," as Homer (the Greek poet, not the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant employee) suggested certain talented ancient Greeks were able to do. Dare we detect the advent of a year of miracles or further horrors? Regardless, one can only hope the swallows will stay aloft.