It Seems To Be Loneliness But It Is Not

Humans are social beings. But what are they when isolated and lonely? In It Seems To Be Loneliness But It Is Not Lukas Marxt puts himself in this situation by going to a place where human encounters and exchange can hardly be expected. The artist moves through an inhospitable location. The subjective camera makes his gaze our own as he glides over a variety of structures in the rocky ground of the volcanic Canary Island of Lanzarote.

The film´s first shot takes us over rugged terrain, and we can sense the nearby abyss. The crunching of the gravel and the artist´s labored breathing accompany each step of this expedition, giving us a feel for the efforts and difficulties involved in his progress. A restless searching in circles throws us back to our own expectations, which contrast with the ease of a sauntering man. In the distance we see a building with antennas and broadcasting towers jutting into the sky, indicating a form of communication from which we remain excluded.
Our path leads down a stairway into the darkness of a basement: The film´s sole interior shot shows a woman on an improvised stage who begins to sing. But before we have a chance to comprehend this unexpected situation, Marxt interrupts the strange encounter. From this point on we don´t see another human being, solely animals. An odd kind of lurking is an extended moment before someone decides to act. At the film´s end the borders between inside and outside seem to have disappeared — if they ever existed at all.

(Daniela Kinateder)


It Seems To Be Loneliness But It Is Not is a study about walking and waiting, an apparatus used in an ambiguous quest. Throughout the whole duration of the film, the subjective view of the camera is placing the observer into a constant limbo between questions: What loneliness is and what it isn´t. As it tackles upon the gentle relation among the protagonist and his surrounding it opens up an intimate path for reading them both.

(Lukas Marxt)