WARS
/5
- WARS
- 2001
- 16mm film transferred to video, b&w, sound (plus documentation)
- 9min, 40sec
Businessmen in the dining car of a long-distance train: waitress, waiter and cook sit back and wait, conveying the indifferent phlegm of fatigue and below capacity employment. They are lolling in the disquieting train set like a ship crew in the blazing heat of the sun. Devoid of communication as they are, they represent nothing more than an extension of the interiors. The service clothing of the staff and the furnishing of the car – a symbiosis of modernist clarity and slightly folkloristic accents – are contrasted with a colonialist-like potpourri of chips, nuts, chewing gums and beverages in form of a display arrangement. Every action seems passive and conditioned through the carriage, the consistency of the tracks, the route of lines, the ambience etc… However, one of the persons seems to be deeply engaged in paperwork! Financial statements and sales volumes are typed into a calculator; apart from that just sitting and waiting in wads of smoke, while the landscape is fast forwarded behind the curtains. Late, but still, life enters the car: No customers, no, but the cleaning agents are retrieved, bucket and cleaning cloths get prepared. The ride seems to end. How else could one explain the excessive mopping and polishing of the threesome? First standing then kneeling under the tables. J.D.