The energetic promise of water to both create energy and to carry information is brought
to life in Rebet’s animation In the Soldier’s Head. Rebet gives her viewer an intensely personal perspective on historical traumas, reinterpreted through the lands, bodies and minds that are subject to them. The film depicts the delusions flowing from a mind ravaged by violence: a vision grown from the inside out. Like a mirage amidst a blank, desert expanse, specters are conjured as the inanimate comes to life. Whirring machines sputter, gears turn and levers crank as ceaselessly firing synapses of a hyperactive psyche pour out. The helmet, like the soldier’s head itself, becomes a crucible for burning delusions fed by the violated land: no more than a vessel for wildly-flowing cerebrospinal fluid impulses. Rebet’s inks literally dance on page and screen, morphing as liquid-fueled illusions, only to wash away, as an oasis vanishes.
