10:59

People’s passion, lifestyle, beautiful wine, gigantic glass towers, all surrounded by water (2011) is, ostensibly, a series of interviews Beloufa carried out with apparent residents of a newly built residential development in an unnamed North American city.

The first subject on screen begins, “People are beautiful here … they have a really good work/life balance.” The interviewees’ meandering zeal for their utopian home paints the ideal of outdoorsy, cosmopolitan “quality of life” as a nebulous and narcissistic purgatory.

The artist’s footage shows large high-rise apartments overlooking pristine lawns and meandering pathways, evoking a middle-class paradise of sunshine, cyclists and joggers. Each interviewee seems unflinchingly positive about the place, further raising suspicion about the truthfulness of their accounts and whether they are, in fact, paid actors in a promotional video.