Matthew Barney: Redoubt
Tinworks at Rialto

Redoubt (2018) is a major work by American artist Matthew Barney, filmed in the winter landscape of Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. Blending classical mythology with the contemporary American West, the film loosely follows the myth of Diana, goddess of the hunt, reimagined as a modern-day marksman, accompanied by her attendants, and accidentally trespassed upon by Actaeon, who is subsequently punished. The film, structured around six hunts, has no dialogue. Instead, its narrative is conveyed through an expressive soundtrack, orchestrated and performed by Jonathan Bepler, and choreography that mirrors and interprets the protagonists’ encounters in the wild.

Diana (played by Anette Wachter, a true world champion sharpshooter) hunts first a stag, then the elusive wolf. She is discovered by the Engraver, a Forest Service ranger (played by Barney himself), who documents his discoveries by etching detailed drawings into copper plates set up in the snowy landscape. He brings these to the trailer of the Electroplater (played by dancer K.J. Holmes, who also contributed to the film’s choreography), who transforms their surface through the electrochemical process. Towards the end of the film, the Engraver ventures into town, where we encounter the Hoop Dancer (played by Sandra Lamouche of the Bigstone Cree Nation) performing inside an American Legion. While the mythological Actaeon is ultimately punished by being transformed into a stag that is then killed by his own hunting dogs, Redoubt culminates in a different and surprising turn of events, where the hunted exact punishment on the creations they inspired.

Redoubt was inspired by Barney’s youth, spent in Idaho, and the controversy surrounding the reintroduction of the wolves in the west.The opening of Redoubt at Tinworks at Rialto coincides with the 30th anniversary of the return of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park, one of the most significant conservation efforts in modern American history. Engaging the still polarizing topic of wolves in the west, Barney describes Redoubt as “an American narrative, a portrait of a region.” It is a breathtakingly beautiful work that layers myth, landscape, and movement in a dialogue between the natural world—and specifically the region of the mountain west—and the human impulse to interpret it.

Screenings take place Thursdays through Sundays at 12:00 PM and 2:15 PM. The film runs 134 minutes, and visitors are welcome to experience it in full or to enter and exit as they choose.