'Rushes - Detroit Scenario',
2011, digital video, 5mins.
Piano: Joao Lima Duque

I traveled to Detroit to explore the city.

Returning a few months later with a sketch storyboard I re-traced my steps with two local actors; an 'urban explorer' (Robert Shannon), followed by a generic 1970's detective (Bob Scavone), both in turn followed by myself with a camera.

The characters slowly near each other in downtown Detroit in an ever-tightening spiral. Their examination of the city destroyed by capitalism is both crime-scene investigation and a hunt for dsytopian beauty, points of view that perhaps cannot occupy the same place at the same time.

The apocalyptic and near-psychedelic environment full of decay becomes an abandonned virtual space held together by projections of memory or future possibility.

The film is installed as a 'scenario', a vintage worktable of AV equipment. The viewer is required to play a record to hear a soundtrack, a custom dubplate of a piano session that is a study of the generic sound in Law & Order. The film and soundtrack loop and match and mismatch generating fleeting moments of immersion and/or metafiction.

 

Top Left: full version of film.

Middle Left: Installation at The Agency Gallery showing Rushes - Detroit Scenario, and Burnt Wood Stories (Computer Room), all 2011.

Bottom Left: detail of Scenario showing custom dubplate soundtrack and vintage turntable.