Petropolis - Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands

Impressive slow-motion zooms illustrate the logics of cause and effect. The images congeal into graphic structures. Still, this landscape bleeding from all wounds displays a bizarre beauty. Mettler uses precisely calculated doses of information, however, to create disturbances which serve as painful reminders to the audience that they are the ones who participate in the modern age, including all its technological conquests. It‘s an extraordinary spectacle whose scope can only be understood from far above. In a hypnotic flight of image and sound, a machine‘s perspective upon the choreography of others suggests a dehumanized world where petroleum‘s power is supreme.