Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

A refreshing antidote to the burgeoning genre of films that focus on illegal immigration and cross-border violence, Peter Bo Rappmund?s experimental portrait of the U.S.-Mexico boundary surveys this wide swath of land?s physical qualities and metaphysical quandaries with an artist?s gaze. The structure of Tectonics is dictated by the border itself, as Rappmund incrementally moves from the Gulf of Mexico bordering Texas, to the Pacific Ocean and California, capturing wide vistas of the American West, the Rio Grande, the monuments and memorials to (personal) histories, and, naturally, the fences and walls that have been escalating since the Bush Presidency. (The actual border appears in 95% of the shots.) Rappmund?s unique process involves shooting photos with a DSLR camera, usually one frame per second, then animating the images in post-production. This method yields jaw-dropping, high-resolution time-lapse photography, described by Thom Andersen as ?electronic Rothko.? (Rappmund shot Andersen?s Reconversão, showing later in the festival). At times, Tectonics resembles surveillance photography, and what?s present is just as important as what?s absent: the world?s most traversed border is also surely the most observed, with visible and hidden cameras, armed patrols, aerial surveillance, motion sensors, etc. Over his voiceover-less images, Rappmund lays a soundtrack that fills in the missing human presence, and deconstructs the sociopsychological image of the border in American society: though everyone has a view of the border, its reality remains unseen. [Mark Peranson, 04 | 08 | 2012]

Peter Bo Rappmund was born in Casper, Wyoming, and grew up in Golden, Colorado. He attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, Mills College, and holds graduate degrees in both music composition and film/video from CalArts. His work has screened at a variety of museums, galleries and festivals including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Anthology Film Archives; Ann Arbor Film Festival; New York Film Festival; Viennale; Locarno; REDCAT, White Box Gallery; Whitney Museum of American Art and the Vancouver, Bangkok, and Hong Kong International Film Festivals. This past summer, PBR held his first retrospective at the Laguna Art Museum, and completed work as principal photographer on Thom Andersen`s latest film about Pritzker Prize winning architect, Souto de Moura.