Pinto Canyon

During three consecutive months, every night, Luc Mattenberger drove his car at sunset down Pinto Canyon Road, a remote path connecting Texas with the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The songs invariably blasting from his stereo system every night were of the kind that in normal circumstances would hardly warrant scrutiny – a random, sapid combination of shopping mall muzak and road trip classics, spanning from Eminem to Britney Spears and Bruce Springsteen. However, in a fashion not rare in Mattenberger’s work, things were to take an unexpected twist, and the apparent innocence of a car roaming in a majestic landscape and a radio providing the quintessential American suburbia soundtrack would be no exception, ably concealing a set of dark references associated to the two machines and the mundane scenery in which they operated. The playlist in question was in fact the very same one prison guards played out loud to impose maximum discomfort to the inmates detained in the infamous Guantanamo base […]
Excerpt of a text by Michele Robecchi