Video, 15 min
[…] Zaldiaren Orena [The hour of the horse], set in German-occupied 1940s France, is filmed from the perspective of a homemade rover, a metallic "animal" that seemingly inhabits both past and future worlds. A mechanically advanced German military has left the machine to guard a provincial southern town—an anachronous emissary, part tank and part spy, of their superior technology. As villagers go about their traditional daily activities, hanging laundry with big wooden clothespins, shearing sheep, or hand-plowing a garden, the robot interrogates them coarsely: "Wo ist das Pferd? Où est le cheval?" Where is the horse? No one seems to know. The robot soon begins to roam, over hill and dale, seemingly contemplatively. A sad electric whine backs clattering footage from the Sony Handycam used to shoot the material, mounted to an extendable rod at the center of its wheeled base. We accompany the beast as it counts wildflowers in a meadow, its gaze whipping between views of soft grass and other flora. It makes kissing sounds at two lovers bathing in a reedy pond, prompting them to embrace. It ponders a forest. […] • Travis Diehl, Art Papers