Passage Briare
/3
- Passage Briare
- 2009
- 16mm film, b&w, no sound
- 2min, 49sec
“Passage Briare” depicts the artist’s fleeting encounter with a man in one of Paris’s numerous narrow alleyways. Stemming from a photographic practice and from vom Gröller’s long relationship with that city, this short film functions like an extended self-portrait about her age, with the artist sitting next to a man on a step by the sidewalk. The problematic aspects of aging are addressed by mimicking gestures that reflect on childhood behavior and on the psychoanalytical implications inherent therein. The silence of the film leaves it up to the beholder to guess the contents of the tittering narration as well as the reason for the artist’s taking her dentures out and putting them back in. Vom Gröller focuses on the gaze between man and woman, be it side by side or via the mirrored shimmering of the artist’s shadow on the wall behind the man while gazing through the camera before she sits down next to him. The Self and the Other hence intertwine by way of an estrangement effect that gives rise to unforeseen moments as ephemeral interactions in public space. W.S.