Like a Palace

The silent video loosely puts together a string of scenes from historical periods (Stone Age, Antiquities, Future, Biedermeier) featuring mismatched personnel on an opaque quest through time and space. The timeline spanning these epochs is as incoherent as it distorts and blurs cinematic formulas such as character development, plot and stringency of narration. Yet, the sets, almost all built at Callie’s, Berlin Wedding, strive for an immersive backdrop for each chapter in terms of set design and costumes. Partly in contrast to the subtitling, these sets aim to make everything look as „right" as possible using self-built, dated special effects (Cloudtank, model building, Green Screen, fake rocks).

The few motifs there are (rules of conduct, housekeeping, depression) would make the most sense for a personal look back in search of decisive moments in the fog of the years gone by. Moments that would support the idea of friendship, of a community, a shared drive, a lost cause, all of them as vulnerable and fading as the fiction they once were a part of. — Peter Wächtler