26 January–20 March 2011
Matts Gallery
London
E3

Ben Rivers’ Slow Action is a..’post-apocalyptic science fiction film that brings together a series of four 16mm works which exist somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction. Continuing his exploration of curious and extraordinary environments, Slow Action applies the idea of island biogeography – the study of how species and eco-systems evolve differently when isolated and surrounded by unsuitable habitat – to a conception of the Earth in a few hundred years; the sea level rising to absurd heights, creating hyperbolic utopias that appear as possible future mini-societies’.(MG)

Present and future documentary: Somewhere between a public service announcement film from years gone by and a documentary on a future we have yet to live through exists Slow Action. A hypnotic voice over describes the environments on the screen, my interior voice tells me that this is (in some parts) an all to possible reality, sad, apocalyptic. Inevitably destroying ourselves.

A fantasy island: Of possibilities and how a society can become as well as cease to exist. Isolated and determined by convoluted traditions, much feels familiar but in a completely otherworldly package. With my eyes glued to the screen and reminding myself now and then that these landscapes (though attributed with a new history) do exist, it placed me in a weird in between place, rather brilliantly.