Rebecca Barten

A descent into the blackness of the projected image and the curators who flick the switches and grease up all moveable parts for hot action when the lights go out.

A cactus-strewn desert becomes the backdrop for this series of filmic stopovers. Great natural beauty clashes with manufactured outdoorsmanship, as a tired body and sluggish mind seek the oblivion of hotel hospitality in an arid region of artistic aspirations. The viewer is introduced to a world of prickly plants and satin-skinned succubi who prowl the alleys of western decay to staple their fig leaflets on the vertical shafts that poke unsheathed at the virgin skies of southern Arizona. The sheaths are administered, and the population prepares for cinematic coupling in a city park earmarked for culture. Enter the masculine caves that spilled forth their glittering guts onto a surface world as desperate for gems as it was for water. Witness this natural spectacle all packaged and delivered in the form of a vacation video, and marvel at the mavens of movie-making as they bombard the public with a cacophony of celluloid under the moonlit, desert sky.

Inspired by the pre-sexual fascination of girls with horses, a romantic incantation and interspecies love story of eternal structures of queer eros, transformation and technological control. As told by a narrator, Johnson is a horse who is the object of the ceaseless praise and unknowable desire of a dreamy silent performer. The movie is a collaged poetic narrative constructed of vintage video technology, miniature tableaux, eerie dreamscapes and pantomimic gestures.