WRO BIENNIAL: LOST NATION – A MENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH THE US

America concerns us: with its dominant, audiovisual culture, its influential film and music industries, it has successfully invaded our imagination. Reaching a point of utter saturation, we may feel the need to take some distance from its invasive role-models. Argos Centre for Arts and Media’s proposal is to search for a different picture of contemporary America: Combining artistic viewpoints from within America (Steve Reinke, Shelly Silver) with those emanating from other countries (Vincent Meesen, Johan Grimonprez, Beatrice Gibson), this programme, conceived as a filmic journey, aims at transmitting a balanced, yet necessarily subjective and fragmented picture of today’s America. Starting our trip on the periphery, in so-called “Small town America” (Vincent Meessen), where villages like “Lost Nation” (Johan Grimonprez), literally lie in the middle of nowhere, we encounter wealthy Suburbia’s inhabitants and their obsession with privacy and security (Adam Leech), before reaching the throbbing heart of New York, Times Square (Peter Downsbrough); we experience surveillance (Shelly Silver) as a key element in a city where the memory of the 2001 terror attacks is still vivid, before visiting the protected, utopian community of Roosevelt Island (Beatrice Gibson), which houses one of the cities most visible, yet little-known modernist social housing projects. Souvenirs of things seen and heard in and about America (Steve Reinke) round off the picture as the journey comes to an end. Taking us back to Europe, the situation is finally inverted, showing us the difficulties Americans are confronted with when moving to Europe (Vincent Meessen/ Adam Leech)