Secrets are only secrets when they have hinted at their existence. Secrets arise when there is a little information, but the whole story had not yet been told. The secret is the vehicle of suggestion. Secrets often creep into forms that only reveal part of their true identity, simple containers that bulge with suggestive import. The content is actually too great for the form in which it manifests itself. Only perceptive observers can reconstruct the whole story from the suggestions. With this conclusion, secrets have an oscillating relationship with perception and the imperceptible. To reveal a secret, or even simply to establish contact with one, the inquisitive needs to undertake a tense investigation into the form of observation that will grant access to the private world of which the secret is the ultimate embodiment. Confusion arises from the fact that it is not by chance that secrets cleave to the suggestive form that they need to exist. This is the story of this allegorical tape, expressed in abstract terms. In the tape, investigator Thomas is dropped into a desert, not just to investigate the growth movements of the plant life there, but also the life's work of the obscure scientist William F. (William Forsythe). He has collected a field of insight and discovery into the growth and movement of plants. That knowledge is stored in the enormous data bank of an underground laboratory. It is Thomas's task to check the obscure professor's secret discoveries with his own investigations into unusual flora. This tape is a video letter written to his co-worker Allen (who does not appear in this tape) during his stay in this strange place. His research leads him into the catacombs of a complex built by William F. There he finds people in a comatose state, stored in cupboards. They are loaded with professor F's knowledge of vegetation. He puts the people-plants into a large transparent pool of water and notices that in the water the 'samples' come to life again. Their dance-like movements are autistic with many pauses. Thomas presumes that the species needs some time to remember their programmed movements. In order to achieve better contact with their secrets, Thomas imitates their movements and plunges into the pool alongside the models. He is literally swallowed up by this wordless investigation and loses his scientific objectivity, despite his fiercest attempts at methodology. It is as if he has been able to establish contact with a 'science' that is much older than the science he thought he practised. Thomas the investigator becomes, himself, a moving plant, unable to reveal the secret insight.
– Willem van Weelden
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Scenario An-Marie Lambrechts, Peter Missotten, Editing, Digital effects Peter Missotten, Music Peter Vermeersch, With Thomas McManus, Tamas Moritz, Regina Van Berkel, Antony Rizzi, Ana Catalina Roman, Demond Hart, Jone San Martin, Jacopo Godani, William Forsythe, Production de Filmfabriek, Co-production INTERARTES, VPRO, TV2, Klapstuk 97
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