Land Escape is a study of movement, migration. The travelers are caught in a mirage, discombobulated by uprooting, by boundaries, by the passage without fixed ends. The absurdity of the conditions recreates the earth as an absurd landscape made out of projected video, chiffon fabric, and barbed wire that breaks through the confines of flat image to invade the shared space, to define a border between the viewer and the work.

The travelers wear animal and human masks, highlighting humanity’s inborn instinct to move, resettle, search, and — it is hoped — find. But in a world of violently enforced borders, this most natural of drives breaks across strange new lines, never quite locking back into place.

What the migrants in Land Escape experience is a breakdown of the natural order. While the space is transformed, time is also. Their journey always leads to the beginning, and their transit leaves no trace. There is no footprint to mark progress, only the looping of their video universe, the eternal return of the human in migration.

It is only when these characters stop for a moment that one can glimpse, in the brief panting of their pause, the human under the mask. These are not just tricks of light but people living in human bodies. Old bodies bent by age, young bodies in pigtails — all bodies that must move, cannot stop for long. And in their pausing, they must contemplate. And in that contemplation, understand the unending nature of their path.

Video Documentation: https://vimeo.com/342607987