3X2X1

A film by Lucas Variz, Alexander Gabriel and Borja Rodríguez.
Shot in maka.lab (Milan) during the summer of 2024.

‘3X2X1’ presents three individuals taking turns on a podium, never occupying the frame simultaneously. The film is built on the tension between repetition and variation, exploring the mechanics of cinema as a language that is never given in its entirety. The device transforms the montage into a system of alternation, in which continuity does not arise from the juxtaposition of images, but from the transition between the viewer and the watched.

The podium, a symbol of competition and hierarchy, is subverted in a mechanism in which the first place is never fixed, but neither does it dissolve completely, evoking the approach of the artist Guy Mees, from whom the artists were inspired. Here it does not define winners or losers, but functions as a device that simultaneously organises and disorganises the flow of time. The use of single frames and the varying speed of the scenes accentuate this fragmentation, denying linearity and reinforcing the instability of perception. The film proposes a reflection on what it means to create collectively in a logic in which occupying the centre necessarily implies relegating the other to the margins.