The newly staged film references and updates Harun Farocki’s The Interview (1996), examining how storytelling has now become a practice through which contemporary workers learn to understand and sell themselves. Throughout the film, the participants and teacher periodically leave the set and go backstage, where they change clothes for new scenes or are paid by the artist for their time and labour. These moments denaturalise the educational situation being staged.
The installation pairs this film with archival footage from a socialist opera school for children in Leipzig, Germany. It shows children learning storytelling as a means of forming a collective vision of society beyond the individual.
A performance lecture expands upon the installation’s wider themes. In its first iteration, actor Juliane Elting delivered the lecture on the artist’s behalf, extending the work’s inquiry into the disembodied voice and the labour of speech.
Cinematography | Ree Bradley and Frank Holbein
Storytelling Teacher | Gabrielle Meyer
Participants | Olivier Coloni, Juliane Elting, Hellen Müller (Mirijam Verena Jeremic), Ada Labahn, Carmen Orschinski, Sebastian Rein, Wolfgang Zarnack
Translation | Uli Reible and Gerald Schuster
Performance Lecture | Juliane Elting, presented as part of Requiem For A Failed State, HALLE14, Centre for Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany, 2018
Installation Views | Requiem For A Failed State, HALLE14, Centre for Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany, 2018
Supported by | HALLE14, Centre for Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany