When Norwegian artist Kjersti Andvig initiated a collaboration with someone called Carlton A. Turner who at the time was on death row in Texas, she aimed to expose a system which she perceived as a unjust mix-up of right wing politics, strange religious beliefs and cruelty. When she finally got to meet Carlton after their artistic work had ended, they fell in love and over a period of three months she stayed in Texas until he was finally executed. [...]
Part of the fascination of the documentary comes from the cognitive dissonance of watching Andvig immersing herself in a world of bungalows, barbecues and beer cans while very lucidly talking about the reasons for her adoption of the quasi-religious views that allowed them to cope with the looming killing of a lover she's never been in the same room with. There's almost bizarre sequences where she shows photos that were taken around the execution with a strange normality in them, and there's lots of talk about God and the mystic reassurance in the supernatural that Europeans often find unsettling about religious America.
Shut Up Child, This Ain't Bingo, on We Make Money Not Art
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