The Rainmakers / Die Regenmacher
2016
1-channel version
4:37 min.
Sound
Camera: Maria Vedder
Editing: Maria Vedder, Manja Ebert
Animation: Marina Schnider
Sound: Maria Vedder
Thanks to: Susanne Ebert, Steve Müller
A video project about finiteness or how we dig up ourselves the water.
The defining element for the video work is a circle. As a line without beginning and end it symbolizes infinity in many cultures.
On my flight from New York to San Francisco I took some photographs of the huge circle formations in the Middle West. To me they seemed a divine or extraterrestrial message. Later I found out that they had been written into the landscape through circle irrigation. The water in Kansas comes from a ground water reservoir from the ice age. The rivers that used to be fed have long time run dry. This fossil water will be used up in a not far away future. Even below Saudi-Arabia and Sahara are water resources from the ice age which have been channeled through circle irrigation into the fields.
Agribusiness has torn the original symbol of the circle into the contrary, the finiteness.
For the film I used my photographs and satellite photographs from USA, Saudi-Arabia, Sahara, South-Africa, Spain and Australia. The circles of the photographs have been set into motion through a digital intervention.
