In order to obtain the material for Global
Soap (2001), Julian Rosefeldt approached the offices of the Goethe Institut
around the world and asked them to record soap operas from their respective
national television channels. With the video tapes they provided, Rosefeldt
constructed a moving picture archive of the stereotypes of soaps. The
gestures, expressions and language of characters were condensed into
sequences of multi-national, multi-cultural archetypes that conflated the
diverse with the unified and the ‘other’ with the mainstream. Intertwined or
emphatic fingers, furrowed brows, clasped breasts and heads in hands
transcended cultural boundaries to be subsumed into a global language of
stereotypical emotional shorthand. In the soap opera everyday life merges
with a fantasy world. The illusion is played out in reality as it
contributes to the process of establishing cultural meaning.
Conversely in Rosefeldt’s later work Asylum (2002), reality is represented
as illusion. In this nine-screen installation a different but highly
theatrical action unfolds on each screen in the form of absurd pointless
rigmarole. It highlights the purposelessness of human activity, but the
title of the work and the categorisation of the characters into gender and
racially distinct groups give Asylum a poignancy and specificity that a
statement about the ultimate absurdity of human endeavour would lack.
In these tableaux groups of men and women are cast as players in scenes of
incredible banality. They are trapped in unusual and exotic locations that
are never clearly identified but which are confined and confining, where the
characters perform an endless round of tasks that seem to have no lasting
purpose – actions that could be described as prosaic were they not imbued
with a poetic significance that Rosefeldt’s eye has brought to their
representation. These characters represent the genus of asylum seekers,
their situation accentuated by the theatricality of Rosefeldt’s direction.
Whereas in the soap opera, fantasy can illuminate real social concerns, in
Asylum the social position of the asylum seeker is revealed by the
fantastic, the poetic drama inherent in the theatricality of each scene.
Rosefeldt’s use of theatre has resulted in a series of beautiful scenes that
contrast vividly with the idea of deprivation and thereby emphasize the
inhumanity of his characters’ position and the real vulnerability of asylum
seekers. The intrinsic humanity of the film demonstrates the essential
life-enhancing dimension of all human endeavour and of people’s drive to
find a decent and secure way of life; but more particularly, it poetically
illustrates the qualities of those marginalized within Western society.
In his most recent work, two films The Soundmaker and Stunned Man, which
form the first two parts of his ‘Trilogy of Failure’ (2004), Rosefeldt
continues his exploration of the meaninglessness that underpins our daily
lives. But whereas in Asylum, Rosefeldt’s depiction of the absurdity of the
asylum seeker’s position is tempered by the social reality of their plight
(a situation that we, as the general public in a host country, are largely
aware of through media accounts rather than first-hand experience), in the
‘Trilogy of Failure’ Rosefeldt’s attention shifts its basis from a version
of social reality to the existential, and in so doing becomes involved in a
cultural trajectory that has been a mainstay of modernist thought. He
involves us not as observers of a social condition in which others’
individual development has been severely constrained, but rather as
spectators of circumstances that relate much more directly to our own
personal existence.
The focus of each of the first two parts of the trilogy is a single man. He
appears to live alone in an apartment. In The Soundmaker, we see him arrive
home, remove his jacket and, as a result of some creative impetus, build an
assemblage of furniture and objects from his apartment in the middle of his
living room. In Stunned Man he arrives home (a different actor but still
‘everyman’), takes off his jacket and begins to make himself something to
eat, look at his laptop and so on. Simultaneously, Rosefeldt warps the
reality of each situation. Shown on two adjacent screens, ‘everyman’ plays
out another story that takes place in cinematic and theatrical illusion,
unpacking the apparent reality of the core action. This time the position of
the central character adds an almost unconscious comedic dimension to the
work. In The Soundmaker the character is providing a soundtrack to his own
existence, and in Stunned Man he literally deconstructs his domestic
environment. In both films, as the circular narrative unfolds, the illusion
created by the set becomes clear and the boundary between it and the real
world is dissolved.
Rosefeldt’s characters, whether recruited from communities of asylum seekers
or fabricated by professional actors, are all stuck in cycles of work that
are never fulfilled. Their lives are tipped over into fantasies that, while
illuminating the futility of existence, never lose sight of the fact that
absurdity breeds humour, that accompanying the dance of death manic laughter
peals.
David Thorp is Curator of Contemporary Projects at the Henry Moore Foundation and former Director of the South London Gallery