Text by Wim Peeters

The Persecution of the White Car was realized in the same year as 15.000.000 Parachutes, and One Year Later, triggered by a workshop in Durban, South Africa. The South African video portrait is more threatening and reads as an indirect but probing topography of an imminently unstable social context. Compared to 15.000.000 Parachutes, the South African travelogue leans closer to a narrative pamphlet and is introduced with an image shot from high in an airplane. The camera looks down on an amorphous layer of thick cloud that seems to erect a concrete wall between the worlds above and below, separating recollections from projections and from experiences. On the spot, the camera rolls ceaselessly and hurriedly, in an attempt at capturing something that would otherwise escape or no longer be comprehensible, and for that reason must be filmed. In a whirlwind of perceptions and eliminations, The Persecution of the White Car develops a singular story about an elusive place and a glance reflected like sunlight on the white lacquer work of the car in the title. Reality exerts upon the camera like a magnet. For some things, the shutter is wide open while for others the camera is subject to a centrifugal force and the focal point, in a reverse magnetism, is far off-screen.