At the n+1 website, Christopher Glazek writes about the films of LA-based artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin, especially his Priority Innfield, a four-film series that has also taken the form of an installation, most notably at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Here’s an excerpt:
That LA is a captivating and problematic place to live, work, and play is just one of the hidden upshots of Priority Innfield, a tetralogy that veers from the Arcadian exuberance of Any Ever and meticulously examines both the promise and limitations of performance-based escapism. Any Ever, I always thought, should make you desire; Priority Innfield should make you worry. The series is a step back from Utopia—an alternately gloomy and hopeful foray into the conceptual minefield of success, complicity, path dependency, personal history, and even the nature of historical causation. Priority Innfield isn’t pessimistic, though; it’s an unblinkered visualization of the slipperiness of identity and the porousness of time. We’ll get over it.
Image: Still from Junior War, Ryan Trecartin, 2013. Via n+1.