«Lost Destinations» is the name of a Web site dedicated to obscure locations in the USA. «Abandoned, unusual, wild and weird road trip photography and beyond» is presented for the viewer's pleasure, including illustrations of an abandoned concrete and building-material factory in Idaho Falls (the «Monroc Facility»), which is the starting point for Michaela Grill's video of the same name. A still image of the picturesque industrial ruin appears repeatedly throughout the half-hour work like a refrain, its stanzas comprising three independent abstract studies. The soundtrack by Martin Siewert underlines the suite's synesthetic character, such as by casting acoustic shadows in places where the video image builds on musical parameters such as rhythm, timbre and tonality. When the color and brightness of individual images are modulated in the reprise, the three episodes independently sample a range of more abstract visual characteristics.
Beginning with a window in the factory's façade, the first is spatial depth, which Monroc attempts to capture in a vortex-like zoom with a sequence of crosshairs that appear and overlap. The increasingly gloomy stream of music complements the three-dimensionality. The second episode addresses the moment of transparence or opacity: Shades of gray and layers of black and white blur as if the viewer were looking through several panes of glass, producing various kinds of amorphous blurriness. The third layer takes aim at the aspect of resolution, using a multi-pane window: Greatly enlarged pixels fill the picture, suspended between accelerated flickering and architectural static. Power chords brace themselves against the final disintegration of the images. In the end Monroc comes to a lyrical, even gentle conclusion with the reappearing still. (Christian Höller)
1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION
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distribution format |
Digital file on server (PAL) |
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screen |
4/3 (single screen) |
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speed |
25 fps |
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sound |
sound |
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rental fee |
92,00 € |
