Desert of the Real

It’s been six years since the real estate bubble burst, and already, the glittering ruins of developer architecture are being reclaimed by nature. Entire suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona are overgrown with tumbleweed. In post-Soviet Georgia, unfinished resorts rot on the Black Sea Coast. In Abu Dhabi, palm trees are dying among half-built film studios and sports complexes. It is where now the world’s biggest arms fair takes place, held in the same kind of desert that provides the location for most of our time’s real and virtual wars. Elsewhere, new man-made deserts take shape as shopping mall replicas of Venice, inhabited by the living dead… Composer and filmmaker Christian von Borries’ new film DESERT OF THE REAL visits these contemporary wastelands. In a rich collage of acted scenes and documentary footage, he extends the metaphor of the wasteland to today’s medial reality. At the heart of so many holographic simulations and replicas, in a world custom-made for selfie and instagram tweets, he reveals emptiness and potential violence.