Richard Kerr
Field Trips
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Add rightsFormat Blu-ray Interzone
Original format 16mm, 35mm, video
Year 1988-2021
Language(s) English
Artist(s) Richard Kerr
Running time 131 min
Films
THE LAST DAYS OF CONTRITION (1988) 35'
CRUEL RHYTHM (1991) 44'
FIELD TRIP (2021) 50'
LE BOMBARDEMENT LE PORT DES PERLES (2004) 9'
INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE: RICHARD KERR'S AMERICA by Stephen Broomer
Description
Canadian artist and filmmaker Richard Kerr grew up in a family split between north and south, near the American border. From a young age, he was captivated by the imperial vision reflected in American mass culture and sports. As he matured as a filmmaker, Kerr increasingly turned his gaze toward America as a subject, undertaking journeys across the American Southwest to study the spirit of a landscape shaped for cinema.
The first of these films, The Last Days of Contrition (1988), scrutinizes post-apocalyptic tableaux appearing along the roads: scenes of a decomposing American dream, in the final days of the Cold War. Kerr continues with Cruel Rhythm (1991), an anthology of Southwest tourism, traversed by combustible currents. After two decades, he returns to the theme of American desolation with Field Trip (2021). Made from crumpled photographs taken during earlier travels, Field Trip constitutes an exercise where subject and form merge into tormented abstraction, flags and signs of anxiety showing through the arcs and reliefs of Kerr's violent abstraction.