‘I built this fish tank, made a world inside, so that I could imagine

the fish. Envision them swimming amongst sunken wrecks,’

narrates the film’s protagonist: blind motorcycle mechanic and rider

Matthew Cassar. We find him at ease in the back room of his house,

surrounded by half-finished dirt bikes and bike frames. Seated on

a stool in the shape of a horse saddle, he faces a large tank filled

with vibrant coloured fish, while a small rabbit hops about underfoot.

Synthesising voice, imagination, machine and animal, this scene

establishes the film’s central concerns with perception, representation,

social class and materiality, particularly in the construction of cinema

and ‘visual’ culture.

The collaboration between Cassar and Stefanou began with a chance

encounter over three years ago, which sparked a friendship and

creative partnership that led to the development of You Can’t See

Speed 2025. The work follows Cassar through various landscapes:

from a craggy green paddock to a garage workshop, a vast quarry

where asphalt is mined to an artificial film set. Dressed in a reflective

silver helmet and motorcycle gear camouflaged in crystals and

evil eyes, apotropaic symbols of protection, Cassar appears like a

magical figure, himself becoming totemic, wandering across real and

surreal sceneries. Riding through what Cassar calls ‘blind vision’, he

navigates directions, turns and jumps via his trainer’s voice, as the

bike becomes a talisman, representing a form of symbolic mastery

beyond sight.

In his own voice, Cassar describes these various worlds both

on screen and within, where ‘image meets experience’. Cinema

becomes sensorium as singing, humming and storytelling blends

with the vibration of roaring dirt bikes. The film shifts between

resolutions as Cassar rides across three cinematic formats:

Super 8, 16mm and high-definition digital film stocks. Tracing the

material histories of motion picture, the work interrogates notions

of speed, modernity and mechanical process captured on film:

from Eadweard Muybridge’s images of the horse in movement to

the machismo of contemporary motorcycle racing. At the film’s

crescendo, right before it fades to black, Cassar repeats, ‘all

resolutions…all resolutions…all resolutions’, as all film stocks

appear on screen, creating an image where abstraction, obscurity,

risk, and pleasure flash in-and-out of visibility.

The horse, a recurring friend in Stefanou’s work, features within

the film and is further represented in the shape of a horse-bit which

holds the screen suspended high above us. The horse-bite, a

device used to control a horse’s movements, serves as a critique

for the way cinema has historically been a tool for propaganda and

control used to manipulate perceptions of power and the State.

Ultimately, the film challenges the boundaries between sight and

blindness, privilege and mobility, creating a new narrative that

shifts the gaze and reflects on the unseen experiences of the

working class.