"All things are in motion and nothing at rest," said Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher whose writing is largely imbued with the weight of melancholia and loneliness. The resignation that all things move beyond our control reads as an ambivalent gesture towards the abject. This feeling of decay clearly pronounces itself within the Or Gallery for their current exhibition of Lynne Marsh's Plänterwald. 
Lynne Marsh, Plänterwald, 2010
At times gliding beneath sunlit tree branches and skimming the skin of algae-infested ponds, the camera in Plänterwald leads us to more abstract and fantastical positions, hovering up and over rusted-out rollercoaster tracks and taking on awe-inspiring viewpoints from beneath the machinery of a long ago abandoned Ferris wheel. The formal tension lies in the park grounds as a hybrid of public, private, and pastoral space. The abjectness of private control is embodied by two security guards roaming the deserted grounds, slowly pushing their way through the thickets, and appearing as anomalies in a failed social experiment to keep this space separate from the public. They are resigned to the unruly natural growth that has been enveloping the amusement park through the sheer force of time. The uniformed men, on foot patrol and carrying out the appearances of safeguarding a world far beyond their control, carry tones of a past and passive surveillance that is more ritualistic than effective.
Shot in a plushly overgrown amusement park in the former GDR, Plänterwald hearkens back to a Victorian sensibility where nature once again overcomes urbanity. As a series of shots in continuum, Marsh leads us through this in-between world of nature and human, growth and control, reminding us all along that change and decay are always in motion; nothing is ever at rest.
Or Gallery: http://www.orgallery.org/
Lynne Marsh: Plänterwald continues until October 12.
Amy Fung is a writer and organizer who publishes nationally and internationally in journals, magazines, catalogues, and monographs in print and online. She is the Programs Manager at Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society and her ongoings can be found at POSTpacificPOST.com and on Twitter @someasianbitch. She is Akimblog's Vancouver correspondent.
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Lynne Marsh at Or Gallery
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