THE NEAREST FARAWAY PLACE (2020)

“The nearest faraway place” is the fourth and final film of the SpaceRider Cycle. The film laid the groundwork for an artistic ecosystem that essentially filters modern life through the lens of an alien-like creature, who rides around on horseback. The Rider herself is the writer and director of the film, Ati Maier. The SpaceRider follows the outline of the former Berlin Wall, after a descent to earth from deep space. Hither the SpaceRider walks alongside the last remnants of the old Wall, starting at Potzdamer Platz towards the Brandenburg Gate.

Once the SpaceRider takes leave of downtown Berlin, in fact, and of the Wall, we begin to experience something of the relativity of time. At the Nazi-built stadium of the 1936 Olympic Games the SpaceRider rides her horse over an outline of the former Berlin Wall, here reduced to flourescent pink and orange masking tape on the ground, the shape of which, as seen from above, takes on the aspect of a time-keeping device. At the final scene, the figure enters into a hollow geodesic dome on a mountaintop called Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain)—an American espionage center from the Cold War era—which matches the shape of the dome the character wears upon her own head (a world within a larger world). And in that way the orb helmet the SpaceRider wears isn't a piece of interstellar travel gear at all. It's a mirror.

Helping Hands Brian Chidester, Amanda Coulson, Steff Tiefenbacher, Matthias Hamann, Laura Stromp, Angelika Pfaffengut

Medicine Wheel Installation Direction West-Color Black Earth-Infancy-Autumn-Evening-Harvest-Insight-Development-Mind

The nearest far away place 2020