Dürer, Melancholia, movies, and me - some ugly sympathy

Basically there was a comment of Chris "This scene reminds me on Dürer´s Melancolia". This happened, if we made the scene in the "kitchen", in this room where I cleaned the dishes, a room that was used long time ago as a dark room for photography, then sometimes used for parties with lots of remaining vessel. By the way it must have been a computer workroom too, and a place to repair things. All this classical and modern human usages had left traces, and now I acted there naked, being involved with the distance of a symbol.

Take a look at Dürer´s "Melancolia". Dürer generally was the first artist ever whose success based on reprints - in history of art he was the start of a capacity we now must live in as artists. And then and now there is his melancholic angel, sitting in the crown of cultural results, and they don´t built a temple - they lay around like ruins.

This was exactly how I felt, working for the movie in this kitchen. Chris´ comment about "Melancolia" was an impulse to me. It led over to sort four of this day´s photos to Dürer´s reprints. 

Months before I wanted to do a performance that melted a poor and a rich lady in one focus: They are caught by their social situation, they are busy with something that does not fill them. There is no thought about getting out or watching something else than their actual job. So the basic performance title was "Poor Girl / Rich Girl". 

After writing the script, the performance had evolved to name the contrast: "Buying and selling", while showing the two girls´common tragedy. The cleaning lady is a seller, the lady who sorts shoes is a buyer. Quite clear there is a cage around the working class. Somehow surprising but realistic in many cases there is a cage too for the so-called owners. 

The general hope, that rich owners should lift the situation of the poor, and the general frustration, that the rich get more rich, the poor even get poorer, are looking for the reason in my performance: What keeps us in our silly cage? Do I have a choice?

This leads over to the center of my movie triptychon. It deals with the ways and effects, that let people behave in another way than their capacity is. I´m shure there are different sorts of censorship. Symbolically I show some ways of censorship: "Come on, there´s so much to eat". "It´s better, you close your eyes now". "A fighter must hide".

Everybody knows these three apes: One avoids to hear, one avoids to speak, one avoids to see. Well, we all are surrounded by people, who want to do the ape with us, aren´t we? Sometimes they try to force us to behave like them apes, sometimes we get mad about them, cause they do the ape and don´t listen, don´t see, don´t even smell what´s going on.

As children we take over what we smell and hear and see. We have to grow up. We take over a dialectic mix of censorhip, of will to survive, and of higher wishes for our life. It´s so dialectic, and the accidents of life are so tricky, that nearly everybody some day is sitting there asking: This life I live now is far away from the whole thing! I´ve been thrown, but I had some choises too. Am I sitting now in a part of the whole complex, that is good? 

While writing these lines, I remember: psychologists call it the "midlife crisis". I feel this melancholic moment coming even more early, and maybe later too in life. I see the middle of my installation giving a psychologistic melancholic sight about this midlife moment: I followed promises that were wrong. I was blinded by owning so much senses. I was used, and I accepted it. I am sitting now in a part of the whole complex not as a result of free will, but as a result of faith and strange choices of reduction.

But I don´t give much debt to parents and society. We must take over some promises. We must exclude some influences. We love to use and to be used, sometimes. It´s fine to experience, it´s fine to exist. So what? I go on cleaning the dishes, frustrated, if I am poor. I go on owning so many shoes that choosing ends in frustration. I can´t climb to the shoe choosing lady, if I clean the dishes. I won´t change my life to help the cleaning lady, if I got my shoes. After all the reflection, after apes and psychologists, after moralic moments and the intelligence of restriction: My movie goes on, with this melancholic touch.
................................................................................................................>...........