Fred Schmidt-Arenales

During his residency in summer 2024, Fred Schmidt-Arenales devoted himself to post-production on his film IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT, previously presented in the form of a multi-channel video installation. Midway between documentary and fiction, the work’s subject is a huge dam project, valued at more than USD 31 billion, intended to protect Galveston Bay and the Houston maritime channel on the Texas coast from flooding due to hurricanes.

The film is built around sequences shot during presentations of the infrastructure plans, designed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, during public meetings of various governmental bodies being solicited to support and fund the project. Some shots also show an Indigenous shamanic ceremony calling for the land affected to be protected, discussions among citizens interested in the project, and presentations by experts and by ecology and community groups who question the need for it. Theatrical performances featuring bureaucrats and goblin-like fantasy figures also punctuate the film’s narrative, providing it with a dramatic range that contrasts with its documentary aspect.

This phantasmagoric theatre piece gives the work all its meaning and reverses the perspective on the events brought to our attention. Given the arguments advanced by either side, Schmidt-Arenales is in fact asking us to see the climate of psychological tension that reigns in public debates and the little room accorded to concerned and vulnerable citizens. So, it’s difficult to say to which destructive creatures the goblins that he introduces into the film refer among all the main characters. Beyond the description of the facts and the arguments for and against the project, the film testifies to how capitalism currently works, creating a climate of emotional confusion around major public investments, often muting the search for the common good to the benefit of privileged economic actors. In this, the situation described by Schmidt-Arenales resembles those that emerged around deployment of the battery project in Québec and in reaction to the observation of contamination caused by the Horne foundry.