Mohave Cruising

Lluís Escartín


After a first shot of a cactus plant, and a second shot of a pair of feet running in the desert towards the camera, the video brings the spectator to the back seat of a car travelling on a road in the desert. A woman is driving, and next to her is the man who presumably is her husband, a rough farmer of the American Midwest with an unintelligible accent. The gradual disappearance of light at dusk becomes an element of suspense in the video. The two characters speak about cars, about weapons, whisky, art..., but they especially talk (and they get excited when they do so) about the desert. This is a desert that we as spectators can feel surrounding us, but that nevertheless we cannot see.

After stating on at least two occasions that they don’t belong to that shit called art, the farmer points to one of those holes. The car stops so that everyone can look at it. The hole of light takes on the presence of an abstract image, due to the terribly beautiful imperfection of the low definition video image. And thus Mohave Cruising offers us a metaphoric reading of the art world, the sensibility, the creativity... In short, art and nature confronting each other in a simple binary structure.

“This is the memory of a trip from the heart of an inhabited desert. People overwhelmed by the colour of the clouds, holes in the sky leading towards somewhere else. A car that is clearly inappropriate for the place drives in the direction of emotions untied: the experience before the cyclone.” Joan Leandre, OVNI

Technical datasheet

  • Title: Mohave Cruising
  • Direction: Lluís Escartín
  • Production: Lluís Escartín. 2000.
  • Duration: 00:13:00
  • Languages: English
  • Subtitles: Spanish
  • Formats: Betacam Digital - DVD
  • TV systems: NTSC - PAL
  • License: Copyright