Matthew Barney (b. 1967)
Hoist (2006)
Duration: 14 minutes 36 seconds

Commissioned as part of the Destricted Short Film Series, 'Hoist' was shot in Bahia, Salvador as one facet of a longer film titled DE LAMA LMINA. 'Hoist' is the literal underbelly of that project: a non- site through which the history, ritual, mythology and deities invoked in DE LAMA LMINA have been refracted and processed. it is a film about the meeting of chthonic libidinal energy and the destructive forces of technology.

'Hoist' describes the encounter between the two central characters of the film; the so-called ‘Green Man’ and a fifty-ton deforestation Caterpillar truck under which he is suspended. Following the three acts of traditional film narrative, it is structured according to the three phases of description, situation and condition.

While the initial two phases relate to the definition of 'Hoist' as an "an apparatus or method for lifting a load and shifting it laterally by an elevating means applied through a support from which a flexible member freely suspends a load engager," the third or final condition of the film suggests the imperfect consummation of the human and the mechanistic.