RESTRICTED AREA

Warning signs abound throughout the country stating point-blank: “Restricted Area. No Approach & Photographing. No camping.”

With Restricted Area, a three-channel video installation, we are set amidst the vast emptiness of the Kuwaiti desert where, to a great extent, the landscape has been claimed by two imperious industries, i.e. the oil industry and the military apparatus. As they both make great effort to keep their stealthy activities concealed, the landscape, as we perceived it, is being held hostage in a state of suspense. Catrysse bolsters a fascination for temporal reverberations of the impact of 20th-century industry on the natural environment. The barren land of the desert — some twenty years ago the setting for a devastating war — in his hands becomes reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic and dystopian imagery of science fiction.

Like in his previous films, ‘Restricted Area’ converts the role of the landscapes from mere backdrop for the plot into protagonist, turning them into active agents in and of themselves. As in many science fiction narratives, the landscape is presented as ‘hero’ and the actual propulsive element is neither character nor plot but the world the author conceives. The action, in other words, does not take place within the film’s setting but rather is reinforced by it.