Mika Taanila - Tectonic Plate (2016)

Mika Taanila’s epic film Tectonic Plate given a collector’s edition release, featuring an incredible soundtrack by Mika Vainio. Includes an audio commentary by Olaf Möller and Taanila plus two extra shorts: Optical Sound (2005) and A Physical Ring (2002) which also features a fully electronic score by Mika Vainio. ”In the ’camera-less’ experiment Tectonic Plate, visual-artist Mika Taanila’s photograms and poet Harry Salmenniemi’s stark intertitles simulate the jet- laggy anxiety of international air travel. Pages from security pamphlets are distorted into rough particles of grain; a five-minute zoom-out transforms words into geometric patterns. These shifts between legibility and abstraction often literally force the viewer’s eyes to refocus, dislocating both cognitive and sensory perception; the resulting dissociative panic produces a very bodily feeling of free fall. The physically droughts photograms, which alternatively evoke encephalographs or airport x-rays of carry-on items, anchor the out-of- body paranoia in an unshakable tactility. Opening the stylish bound book of Salmenniemi’s text in the box set (which also contains two shorts by Taanila) reawakens the sensory trauma: ”I am an accident that is happening to someone else.” – Chloe Lizotte, Film Comment“