Dark Holler
Collaboration with Jeremy Drummond (Never Met a Stranger)
 4k HD Video
30:08 Minutes
2018

Built on a soundtrack of environmental soundscapes, field recordings, sound collages, and re-interpretations of traditional music of central Appalachia, Dark Holler is a 30-minute observational video recorded on Pine Mountain in the coalfields of Eastern Kentucky. Somewhat of an anomaly in this region, Pine Mountain has withstood the effects of industrial coal mining -- this mountain exists because nothing can be mined from it. For centuries, Pine Mountain has also served as a home for musical, oral, and religious practices that have a complicated relationship with industrial progress and environmental degradation. Home to evolving cultural traditions as well as a contested site of industrial production and social resistance, Pine Mountain serves as a microcosm for exploring relationships between industry and the environment, landscape and vernacular culture, and preservation versus progress.