Driving your car through Berlin’s illuminated streets blasting out rock music at full volume is an exciting experience. It pulls you into a kind of trance. In my video the ride becomes the intoxication of a drug addict. The city scenes are well recognizable at the beginning, but slowly become abstract images: colorful from the start and kaleidoscopic ecstatic (good trip), but then slowly turn cruel and threatening, like a bad oil slick on the surface of the ocean, and the music deteriorates unfailingly (bad trip).
Car driving, city lights – contemporary civilization is everywhere based on a deep addiction to fossil fuel. The global environmental and climate problems related to fuel consumption are well known and undeniable: the earth’s future is in danger. We should recover from our fossil dependency if we don’t want to slide into an eternal bad trip.

The robot Red Rekall, who appears in the beginning and at the end of the video, is a key figure in my Rekall Project, in which small wind-up toy robots guide people around the world and create artificial travel memories. Rekall creates experiences which you undergo, but at the same time observes us – at that point you may realize the absurdity of our existence.

Screenings:
• September 30 – October 4, 2020: Over the Real – Festival Internazionale di Videoarte, Lucca.
• January 10 –  March 6, 2020: in loop at the exhibition Fossil Addiction, Group Global 3000, Berlin.

title: Good Trip, Bad Trip
technique: Experimental video and animation
length: 4’25”
year: 2019
sound design: by Maria Korporal with a CC0 track by Loyalty Freak Music