Slow Train 'A Comin'

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Slow Train 'A Comin'

Brit Bunkley
at New Zealand Film Archive - Wgtn
8 Jun 2007 - 23 Jun 2007

by David Cauchi 9 Jun 2007

2 Votes - 5 Stars

I should probably begin by declaring an interest. I recently gave a talk at the Film Archive entitled ‘Why science fiction is the only legitimate art form of the 20th and 21st centuries’, and I see this exhibition mostly in terms of that argument.

The exhibition comprises a set of short digital video vignettes (though tableaux might be a better term) and a couple of sculptures. We are familiar with the cliche of there being something dark in rural New Zealand, but this is no Vigil nor does it contain the usual gothic stereotypes. These apocalyptic visions are brightly lit and coloured, populated by people who look as if they have stepped out of some corporate PR video. A lighthouse gives off an alarm and starts spinning, a train travels along the side of a cow, a bloated sheep’s corpse sprouts flower patterns, and a mountain melts into a bland and featureless plain.

It's not a bleak vision though. There's a nice sense of humour pervading it all. I thought the videos were like three-dimensional Magritte paintings. I mean three dimensional in the sense that they have two spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. There’s a fixed viewpoint, and usually only one part of the composition slowly moves. Like in a Magritte painting (and, for that matter, a Philip K Dick novel), there’s no distinction between animate and inanimate objects. All our old certainties have been lost. Even the landscape has become corporatised, and the animals on it are engineered in the lab.

This is the latest in a series of strong exhibitions at the Film Archive. It's a great resource.

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