press release
Lektionen in Finsternis |Lessons of Darkness
Werner Herzog
1992
After Nature opened to a Lessons of Darkness, a film by German filmmaker Werner Herzog. It set the tone of the exhibit projecting footage post Iraqi soldier retreat from Kuwait, Gulf War (1991). Upon leaving they ignited nearly 700 oil wells across Kuwait. These fires blazed for months destroying six million barrels of oil each day. The panaramic aerial views are shocking, as Massimiliano Gioni described best stating, "Otherworldly , or surveillance videos of another planet". The graphics are from another world than the ones most of us know. One of the most psychological chapters in the film is one that Herzog interviws a woman and child whose husband/father was tortured and killed in front of them by a soldier. The young child has not spoken sincethe inccident 2 years prior. There was also a chapter that scanned over tables with found objects from torture chambers layed on them like specimens. Herzog structures the film like a documentary never stating the war, and never stepping into a political arena. Instead the film is described as a tortured world on the verge of dissappearance, where natural order has been inverted and perverse creatures destroy their own resources.
