Single-channel video, color, silent, 50:20 (2000)
Arena examines the space of speed and the rendering of human experience that speed leaves in its wake. Cleared, restricted, and highly scrutinized, the tarmac of the autodrome is a cathedral reserved for velocity. Like other spaces of ritualized combat, this place carries a strange charge even when not in use. Contained in these hyper-slow images of speed (and its counterpart - failure) is a rendering of physical space for machines occasionally ruptured by the emergence of bodies from within and around them. Though complicated to achieve, the essence of speed is a simplified and reduced condition in which everything either serves or opposes it. Shown here are both glimmers of speed made excruciatingly slow — the simple condition made visible — and the after effects of speed when that simple condition has been returned to the slower arena of the complex.