Michael’s work
Badlands,
Computer Animation

Badlands is the only video art on display at the St. Claude Collective. Artist Greathouse describes his animated work on his website (http://www.michaelgreathouse.com) as:

“Inspired by film noir and [sic] b/w Hollywood horror films, my most recent work is a series of short video loops produced exclusively with composited computer animation. In these videos there is no beginning and no end, only a single moment continually repeating like a skipping record. Questions are not answered; the story is implied but never defined.”
We hear footsteps, the buzz of power transistors, buzzards, and white noise which together overtake the viewer as the camera slowly pans around. The sun bears down and buzzards fly ominously ahead. Soon a lens flair begins to distort the image. We begin again where we started. The sound overtakes us, as we are doomed to go around the same pole over and over. Time is lost. We are lost. Somehow amidst this lush representation the world has been cropped to a point that we cannot locate ourselves, cannot find a way to orient our presence in relation to an overwhelming moment in the world.

Badlands are an arid landscape with clay rich soils and heavy erosion due to wind and water. By their nature (and name) they are bad lands. Lands you never want to cross. Badlands conveys a mental state which no person wants to traverse. Circling around, stuck on an un-navigable course , unable to move. This is a horror film in which we are our own monster, in which we hear our footsteps ricocheting toward our own demise.

Sergio Lobo-Navia