Rob Carter – The Visitors [excerpt 2]

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

The Visitors, 2017, four or single channel HD video, b&w/color/sound, total running time: 21 minutes

The Visitors is a stop-motion animation compiled of postcards, photographs and video shot on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. This famous island has a long and complex history of natural and societal evolution, and is remarkable for its blend of rustic farmland, chic resorts, and grimy low-budget tourism – heavily dependent on British and German vacationers. This work represents the island through centuries past and its perceived future, chronicling physical changes and equally temporary visitations. Alterations include the impact of mass tourism as well as environmental change, such as common brush fires and the invasive Asian Palm Weevil that has been decimating palm trees – island symbol of beach leisure.

The production of this video is grounded in traditional techniques of stop-motion filmmaking, with the majority of movement created with sequences of still photographs. Images of views shot over various decades are cut and collaged in three dimensions to give the illusion of action, narrative, and ruin. This process reflects the history and evolution of photography as record, as memory, and as a marketing product embedded into the tenet of vacation travel.

The animation is divided into four sections: Native, People, Tour, and Exploit. Over the course of each section, the imagery oscillates between color and B&W, between time periods, and between construction and destruction. The uneasy shifting between photographs in motion and stillness suggests that this piece of land is in constant flux on both human and geologic timescales. The twentieth century postcards mark time beyond my own, but still tied to my experience and record of the island. For the most part, they show only minor changes to the landscape apart from the significant impact of post Franco capitalism and globalization. However, this is merely the backdrop for an island that has been exploited over and over based on the prevailing belief system or nationalism of the time. Ultimately the video points to the ramifications of human impact on environments but their ultimate insignificance before and beyond our own epoch.