Programme saison vidéo 2007 #31

S a i s o n V i d é o 2 0 0 7
à l’image s’en prennent à coup de battes aux gravats ou à ce qui peut encore être détruit.
Le bassin asséché, réceptacle de l’activité favorite de ces adolescents - le lancer de cendriers - a piteuse
mine confronté à son allure passée. Sous les “feux des projecteurs”, les gradins jadis bondés sont désormais
vides et graphités. Dans ce film noir et blanc, Anna Klamroth confronte l’ordre mis en scène de l’idéal communiste
à la réalité post-socialiste. Elle ne prend pas parti, n’ajoute aucun commentaire, respecte la parole
d’autrui et les documents d’archives. Deux réalités antinomiques sont confrontées dans un défilement
d’images et de collage sonore. Le dernier plan est brutal : un athlète ajuste son plongeon avec toute la grâce
d’une technique parfaitement éprouvée et l’image suivante une vulgaire caisse éclabousse l’eau stagnante
d’un splash lamentable.
Mo Gourmelon
48
Anna Klamroth decided to take her time over the recording and editing. The artist spent
two years filming Rico, Enni, Tom, Steven and Christian, and they accepted her presence,
let themselves be captured by her camera. We see them playing on the site of the Karl
Friedrich Friesen swimming pool in East Berlin. Once the biggest pool in that half of the
city, it was closed after the fall of the Wall and went from disuse to ruin. The vast abandoned
space became the favourite territory for bored pre-adolescents and their pursuits. “This is
our mate Harald Juhnke, just a big berk.” “If Vasim knew you had some fags, he’d smoke
them all and you’d be laughing on the other side of your face.” “One of these days the
whole place’ll fall down, they’ll smash it in and CRASH!”“School’s over.”“Well, you should
be happy, jerk.” They show off a bit for the camera, and this behaviour makes them very
likeable. Klamroth’s approach is very subtle. She does not judge. She is totally open. Shot
in 1999, her documentary Sportfrei is an instructive film about the years of German
reunification and spatial reconfiguration. The artist makes incisive use of archives,
documentary footage and the voices of commentators. The insertion of a proclaimed
past order into the current chaos, of prosperity into collapse and of discipline into idleness
is powerful and utterly convincing. The editing of the film is based on the contrasting
perceptions of the space in the past and in the present, and, through its present and
previous users. Present and past do not jibe, and future prospects seem poor. We see the
honed, sculpted bodies of yesteryear’s athletes, streamlined forms cutting through the
sky and cresting the water, followed by images of adolescents moving about in the bottom
of the pool, on stagnant water, using chairs and benches that have fund their way there.
On one side, self-surpassing effort, elevation, weightlessness and élan towards a victorious
future; on the other, a return to earth, down in a hole with no prospects. The commentator’s