Pineland
Two people testify about the same incident, but they seem to be inhabiting different worlds. Pineland is a real-world Rashomon story inviting critical inquiry about truth, perception, American identity and institutions.
At a traffic stop, distinguishing reality from fantasy becomes the difference between life and death. Pineland will tell this true story in two genres, on two screens: on one, an original staged reenactment, and on the other, Hollywood film clips riffing visually on the theme, under a voice-over soundtrack of testimony from the actual court case.
We realize that the testimony from the real case might as well have been scripted in Hollywood. Trauma is mined for entertainment. Testimony, in contrast, is meant to reveal truth. But is it, too, a performance influenced by fictional tropes?
Who is granted state power to determine what is truth and what is fiction? What happens to a society that can no longer tell the difference?
This Pineland installation concept was shortlisted for the 2019 Tim Hetherington Trust Visionary Award.
The story begins on the next page.