Imperial Valley

STATE Studio presents the documentary work of artist and filmmaker Lukas Marxt as part of the thematic exhibition Hydrosphären. The Austrian artist and filmmaker investigates in his work the dissection between a world interfered with and designed by humans over the natural order. In his immersive documentary video work “Imperial Valley (cultivated run-off)” and photographic installation, he depicts California’s most important region of industrial agriculture located in the Sonora Desert. Through a birds eye view we follow artificially laid water channels and fly over monocultures that seem to dissolve into abstract forms. Marxt invites us to bear witness of an anthropocentric environment driven by exploitation and corporate interests but what are the consequences of human action for the ecosystem and how real are these landscapes we artificially create?