CAR IN DESERT DRIVING IN CIRCLES by Lukas Marxt I 7 min
A mountain range on the horizon separates the cloudy sky from the dusty desert soil of the El Mirage Dry Lake, with the sounds of a distant roar.
In the long shot, the gaze shows a detail of the Californian Mojave landscape, whose static panorama forms the referential and also material background for Circular Inscription. In a performative tracing of a vehicle´s path, Lukas Marxt initiates and documents in his cinematic work, the process of inscription that gives the film its title:
a seemingly unmanned white car rolls into the image and begins to spin in eccentric rounds in the middle of the dried out lake. The vehicle draws its circles uniformly, from inside to outside, the squealing of the tires continuously rising. In doing so, the tire tracks furrow spiral-shaped in the desert surface, leaving behind marks in the soil of this culturally imbued landscape – a favorite shooting site for Hollywood films and advertisements, a popular venue for car races and their media exploitation, a site tightly bound to the art-historical movement, Land Art
A Day for Cake and Accidents by Steve Reinke I 4,10 min
Reinke continues to explore the quirky possibilities of the animation film, collaborating once again with Jessie Mott, who delivers her idiosyncratic drawings, paintings and collages, plus also wrote the accompanying texts.
References to cartoons and comics are once more evident, though Reinke stays somewhat of a league of its own.
‘A Day for Cake and Accidents’ brings up the parade of animals that refer to mythology and saga – a double headed unicorn or a sphinx-like creature for instance – as seen before in Reinkes earlier ‘Everybody’.In a deadpan matter-of-fact manner these creatures state and comment, ranging from simple axiomatic facts (“Today is our Birthday”) over comical philosophical-like statements (“The moon is melting”, “Saturn is cracking”) to completely absurd remarks (“It gives me a small egg, provokes my tendency for coma”).
Driven by a thumping techno beat or the snare of a drum-computer plus a nimbly montage, Reinke opts once again for the short format of the music video (not to mention the tons of musical references to pop culture). As the title of this work points out, this brave ‘A Day for Cake and Accidents’ refuses to take a clean-cut position. Not able to choose between fantasy or reality, between irony or melancholy, nor between light-footedness or defeatism, this piece disconcerts and discomforts as it amuses oh so strongly at the same time.