


Lukas Marxt &
When we immerse ourselves through the work of Lukas Marxt into a Californian desert, more precisely into the Imperial Valley, a region located directly on the border between the USA and Mexico, we encounter a world rich in contrasts. Industry before landscape, machine next to human being, artificially before naturally grown, speed in interplay with calm. The camera initially moves freely through the frame, almost floating. It then comes to a stop and films the activity as an observing instance: people pack, follow the machines, bend and pick, load and clear away. The lens mediates between us and those observed, because we initially remain outside, understand only gradually what is happening. We soon discover logos on tin and cardboard: ›Valley Pride‹ and ›Ocean Mist‹. Two thirds of the vegetable cultivation of the USA takes place in the spaces reserved for industrial agriculture located here, the products marketed under such cynical-mild names. We thus become witnesses to the horrendous exploitation of both nature and human beings. This is because the region around the highly systematised hyper-agriculture is not only victim to an in the meantime unstoppable water shortage and pesticide pollution, which has in turn resulted in the immense extinction of flora and fauna; it is also only possible in its systematics because the people who work here, mostly from Mexico, are employed under extremely questionable and sometimes illegal conditions. Accompanied by the extremely hard sound design of Jung An Tagen, the work VALLEY PRIDE by Lukas Marxt opens our eyes to how a system that has been established for decades has, in its perfection, forgotten nature and humans – and this proudly. (Riccarda Hessling)
Production: s u n³b°u°r°s t FILM
Supported by: Sonic Acts Biennial and Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport