Australian photographer/video artist Darren Sylvester sent me an e-mail out of the blue last May, asking to see my pictures of The Carpenters’ back yard. I’d had the fortuitous privilege of visiting Karen and Richard’s former Downey, CA abode a year earlier, when I’d lucked upon an estate sale held by the current owners of the property. From the street, it looks like any other nondescript stucco ranch style home, but the decaying backyard garden serves as a sad reminder that the property was once a suburban sanctuary for the duo that personified a more conservative, domesticated rock n’ roll, running their lives completely counter to the status quo of debaucherous rebellion (at least, on the surface level). What should be a veritable pop culture landmark has fallen into complete disrepair in the 15 years since Karen’s untimely death.

Sylvester’s interest in the pictures I shot that day stemmed from a video project he was working on, about “time and decay in music.” He ended up creating a scale simulation of the Carpenters’ backyard at its zenith, perhaps recapturing the serene splendor that is now all but gone from its real-life counterpart. “It looked amazing, albeit strange,” he told me in a recent e-mail. “It was around 60 square metres in size, and we put it together in a day, filmed the next day, took it down the next.” The video, entitled I Was The Last in the Carpenters Garden, will be premiering on November 15th at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia.

Sylvester was kind enough to answer a few questions for Future Shipwreck in anticipation of his upcoming video. If you can’t make it to Australia for the premiere, a selection of his work is currently on display stateside through October 11th at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York, as part of the Silverstein Gallery Annual.

What significance does Karen Carpenter’s tragic story hold for you? Also, of all the places in their lives, why did you choose the Carpenters’ backyard to re-create for your latest video?

It wasn’t really Karens tragic story, more I’m a fan of their music, especially the emotion they could distill within a pop song format – of course, what occurred is that Karen was obviously singing it like she meant it – she truly had a broken heart, and she played drums, so I like to think of her as the original Riot Girl.

So after reading a lot about their history, I realised a lot revolved around their family unit, and the home. Their father went with them on a promotional trip to Japan and loved the gardens, so came back to LA and made his own take on it.

Whether by pointing out the inherent morbidity of glamour’s time-fearing deceptions, or by elevating seemingly meaningless transitory moments into disarmingly hyperreal focus, there seems to be a current running through your work hinting at the dangers of ignoring the urgency of the present in favor of investing hope and energy in some intangible, idealistic future. How do you keep yourself grounded in the reality of the everyday?

Yes, but we all struggle with time don’t we. It’s the one thing that will always beat us. I don’t like mornings when you wake up and look in the mirror and think you look old today. Realising you’ll never be this young again. Always older than before. So, I quite like to slow some parts down and re-examine them, such as this garden, or through photographing a set based on a set from a movie. Or recreating video clips, take for take.

Your work speaks to the strangeness of a global culture where consumption has become so imbued in our lifestyle that it often serves as a proxy for human interaction. How do you feel that individuals in laissez-faire economies such as Australia’s and America’s can constructively change the amount of sway global corporations have over our lives?

I don’t think they can really sway. I don’t think people are that smart, and really don’t think they can come under one banner for change, and I don’t think they mind things the way they are. And then what is the alternative? No global sway? I think we’d all get bored.

I might off-base here, but it seems like clothing plays a significant role in your work— in your photographs the wardrobe frequently feels highly specific, uncomfortably idealized and socially constricting. Do you find yourself consciously trying to convey information and undertones with your wardrobe choices?