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Apple Grown in Wind Tunnel

Steven Matheson

2000 00:26:00 United StatesEnglishB&W and ColorMono4:3Video

Description

This absurdist, microscopic film noir follows the activities of an underground network of ill people, desperate to create alternative methods of self-care in a world where natural resources are disappearing. While examining the meaning of health, disease, and well-being in the post-industrial world, Apple Grown In Wind Tunnel imagines the development of a culture at the margins, linked by illicit radio broadcasts, toxic waste sites, the highway, and ultimately by the overwhelming desire to find a cure.

"To the immune system in the 21st Century, here's a sublime video elegy: a tale of illness, and grass-roots conjuring against the contemporary malaise. This riveting toxic-road-movie seeps and slouches forward in search of a cure."

—Craig Baldwin

About Steven Matheson

Steven Matheson is a videomaker and installation artist working at the borders of both documentary and fictional narrative forms, exploring the ways that the "everyday" can be re-framed and opened up as terrain for fictional re-invention, aesthetic experimentation and social criticism.  His experimental portrait Stanley has received numerous awards, including a Juror's Choice Award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival and a Jury Award at the New York Exposition of Short Film and Video.  His piece Apple Grown In Wind Tunnel has received a Golden Gate Award for New Visions in Film and Video at the San Francisco International Film Festival.  His work has exhibited internationally, at such venues as the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the ICA in London, and Amsterdam's World Wide Video Festival. 

He received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego.  He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and is on the faculty at Mills College in Oakland, California.