3494 Houses + 1 Fence (2006)

• 65%
• 2006
• Mireille Astore
• Fabian Astore

Houses, neat, some pretty, some with children playing in front, collide with sounds. Sounds remembered from so long ago, maybe from one of Beirut's many wars, maybe even from future wars. In this 6 minute video, the street scape of Broken Hill, 'the accessible outback' country town of Australia, is seen from the viewing platform of past realities, woven into a tapestry of morality, memory and experience. There, exponential repetition sets apathy on a collision course with fear and where displacement of the senses, synchronicity and loss accelerate at vertiginous speed. Mangled silences interrupt, but only to disrupt the remnants of illusion and safe living, to send eidetic shock waves through rose coloured lenses. The question of responsibility then emerges to demand if not an answer, then a pause for grief, for consideration due to the boundaries of the senses and the centrality of the body's, any-body's, pain and sorrow.