The Control of Water
Whoever has control over the water has power over life and non-life. Who determines how much water flows where at what price will decide the fate of entire countries. Meanwhile there is a worldwide fight for water rights. Climate change is making the situation worse every year. In hardly any other region of the world does the wet meet the dry in such an extreme way as in southern California. In an almost brutal way.
Green fertility borders directly on empty, parched soils, channels carry immense masses of water right through desert regions with temperatures of up to 50°C/120°F. Extreme productivity meets extreme barrenness. In the middle of it all is a huge, blue lake, which was created by a man-made accident, which in the meantime has turned into a bathing and fishing paradise ("The miracle in the desert") and has now become a man-made environmental disaster again: the Salton Sea.

NILAND - The Dry and the Wet
The audiovisual installation condenses the documentary material collected during a 2-month research period into a three-sided video projection with 4-channel sound. Together with the saxophonist Ulrich Krieger (LA), Klein developed an independent musical level that corresponds with the video triptych and contrasts it at the same time. Image and sound are used equally and create a soothing effect in the 16-minute film.
The video triptych itself runs in an even rhythm of 2 triple images followed by a continuous single image. The individual video sequences are all almost photographic fixed shots, the three parts of which have been set together with great precision to create a strong horizon effect, and each of which shows a specific situation from three perspectives. In the midst of the 30 scenes in total, a documentary block of fast-cut TV footage appears, making the hundred-year history of the Salton Sea appear in a flash.