Watching: Engine

Overview

Engine materializes Liz Harris’s self-confessed obsession with engine sounds from cars and trains, and noise explosions heard at drag races. For Harris, that is the sound of excess, power, sex, destruction, capitalism, and oil becoming an airborne pollutant. All the same those are the sounds of transformation, from which comes life. With an original film by Takashi Makino shown in the background, Engine is a large stage machine of guttural bass tones and constant revving up that mimics our heartbeat and breathing, and pumps the blood in our veins.