Atoms For Peace - Ingenue

Artist Statement

I grew up in Palm Springs, California, a desert valley surrounded by the San Jacinto mountain range, a resort town offering little stimulation to its residents. Inevitably, the children raised there grow bored easily. Most search for outlets in the arts or sports; I was lucky enough to find solace in music and performance. Others took up detrimental and harmful hobbies to alleviate themselves. In music terminology, I felt a “dissonance” in the desert, the clashing of a harmonious landscape with many inharmonious lives.

Both writer/directors David Lynch and P.T. Anderson explore the use of locale not just as a setting, but also as a character of its own. After watching Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) and Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990-1991), I recognized the cinematic idea and theme of an environment manipulating and influencing the emotional arcs of the inhabiting characters. These works resonated with me, and even though I wasn’t able to make the connection immediately, I soon realized that this was the idea behind the poignant “dissonance” of my adolescence in Palm Springs.

Because I had an outlet and I eventually left the confines of the desert, I’m able to look back at Palm Springs with a newfound fascination for the incredibly diverse human experiences that unfold there. In the films that I write and hopefully direct, I wish to capture the vast spectrum of human reaction to living in a wasteland and why, on a subjective and psychological level, these reactions happen. Through film, I wish to capture the “dissonance” of the desert.