ARTFILM
KOW Issue 2 |
Written 30 January |
Saturday 21 March, 01:00Galerie jocelyn Wolff, 75020 [map]
Working historical fact,
Frédéric Moser and
Philippe Schwinger’s films tell of war, the hypocrisy of social relationships, and the disenchanted desire of utopia through fiction. The two directors twist, rework, and replay fact and historical content of a period of history to create a distance that paradoxically allows us to get closer to fact and objectivity.
The installation presented at the gallery by Moser & Schwinger, Farewell letter to Swiss Workers (2006), questions the notion of social utopias beginning from a letter that Lenin addressed to Swiss workers in 1917 before leaving Zurich to engage in the Russian Revolution. A part of the installation, the film, Alles wird wieder gut, is a political fiction that prompts the following questions from a micro-society of a former East German, 21st century village: what kind of society do we wish to live in? What kind of society are we capable of? What common way of life do we dream of? The film echoes that of Tout Va Bien, filmed in 1972 by Godard and Gorin. With a touch of asserted absurdity, the film presents a group of young people who get together to try to find a way out of their social isolation and precarious situation.
