In the Grass 8:45

Trevor Van den Eijnden
Laser-cut paper, aluminum surface, iPhone 5
Slow motion video
1:00:26 loop
2014–2016

Abstracting the Earth, In the Grass 08:54 works within a stylized presentation that endeavours to make evident a worlding in conflict with nature. Slowing down eight minutes and fifty-four seconds of high-speed film by a factor of eleven produced this one hour film. Stripped of sound, it presents a reverse time-lapse with the “effect of supersaturating the images with ordinarily imperceptible affective content” (quote from Art and Phenomenology). It makes evident micro fluctuations of the flames, the resistance and imminent collapse of the structure, the smouldering ruin that emanates heat, and the gradual transition from space of trauma to an place of rupture, that in the original occurs so quickly we take the now presented sequential nature for granted. It is meant to be melancholic, succeeding if it teases out reflections on current, plausible, and possible dystopic worlds.