"In the two-channel video installation Deserted (2014) Tomas Sjögren creates dreamy visions of a desert experience seen through the eyes of a camera lens as it overlooks a barren landscape. Through the use of errors in the renderings, filters and distortions, the films bring associations to Glitch Art as well as experimental and structural film from the sixties and seventies. The effect is something of high technology imitating lo-fi visuals.
Deserted also pays tribute to such remote characters as Carlos Castaneda’s series of books of the teachings of Don Juan. The films are slow and atmospheric and together with the ambient soundtrack the desert becomes a place that is hallucinogenic and mysterious. The pictures are distorted and as we, the viewers find our way through the landscape, as the film dissolves before our eyes. In a central scene, a skeleton is found and with it a camera. The camera comes alive and starts moving around, and we become aware of what the camera sees. This change of perspective poses questions of what we are actually looking at and who is looking."
