Steven Matheson

Steven Matheson is a video maker and installation artist working at the borders of both documentary and fictional narrative forms, exploring the ways that the 'everyday' can be re-framed and opened up as terrain for fictional re-invention, aesthetic experimentation and social criticism. His experimental portrait "Stanley" has received numerous awards, including a Juror's Choice Award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival and a Jury Award at the New York Exposition of Short Film and Video. His most recent tape, "Apple Grown in Wind Tunnel" has received a Golden Gate Award for New Visions in Film and Video at the San Francisco International Film Festival, a Juror's Choice Award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival, First Prize at the Videoex Experimental Film & Video Festival, and an Honorable Mention for Experimental Video at the Athens International Film Festival. His work has exhibited internationally, at such venues as the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the ICA in London, and Amsterdam's World Wide Video Festival. He received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego. He teaches at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Apple Grown in Wind Tunnel
written/directed/edited: Steven Matheson
26:00, 2001, Betacam SP

This absurdist, microscopic film noir follows the activities of an underground network of ill people, desperate to create alternative methods of self-care in a world where natural resources are disappearing. While examining the meaning of health, disease, and well-being in post-industrial culture, "Apple" imagines the development of a culture at the margins, linked by illicit radio broadcasts, toxic waste sites, the highway, and ultimately by the overwhelming desire to find a cure.
"To the immune system in the 21st century, here's a sublime video elegy; a tale of illness, and grass-roots conjuring against the contemporary malaise. This riveting toxic-road-movie seeps and slouches forward in search of a cure."

- Craig Baldwin

"An uncanny evocation of the darkest paranoid heart of the American dream that lures its viewer into a post-nuclear landscape of radio communion and pharmaceutical salvation."

- Mike Hoolboom
* FIRST PRIZE, Black Maria Film and Video Festival
* GOLDEN GATE AWARD, San Francisco International Film Festival
* FIRST PRIZE, Videoex Experimental Film & Video Festival
* EXPERIMENTAL VIDEO HONERABLE MENTION, Athens International Film Festival

Title: Apple Grown in Wind Tunnel
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