Fears of minute 16
I am not the most creative person in the world. I am afraid and at the same time curious. What is the content I will be faced with by watching this minute? Will I be able to fulfill this quest or will I fail? How will the audience react to my writing? Do I really care what they think? I mean, I don’t even know them just like they don’t know me, and after this semester I probably won’t see them again. So why should I care? But still - I have to open up and share my thoughts and emotions I associate with this minute with the plenum. It feels like a striptease, just without a pole and some good music in the back. I just hate not to be in control and to be unsure if my performance will suit their expectations.
We were told this is an experiment - maybe it works out or maybe not. Perhaps this sequence will touch me or perhaps it won’t. I am debating with myself if I should listen to the sound first or watch the minute without the sound or have it both at the same time. I decide to watch the minute without the music. What I can see is frightening and oppressive like a nightmare. Young girls, dressed neat in their Sunday best, walking slowly like soldiers in ranks and filing toward a building. I assume that the building is an orphanage because there is also a nun appearing in the picture. But why is she walking in the opposite direction with her face turned away from the children? Also the building looks more like an abandoned building or a ruin. In an instant I associate this scene with a walk to the death camp. With god’s blessing and the nun’s knowledge, the young girls are being sent to the block. Naïve and trustworthy seem their walk or are they just so frightened of what will happen behind the closed door?
All of a sudden there is darkness. An unexpected lonely folklore dancer appears. I still got the bad taste of the previous scene in my mouth, the negative thoughts and the fear. Was the dancer to appear on the scene to loosen up the feeling of oppression? His face is not shown. He dances on the spot, continuously turning and turning like he dances just to survive. It seems like he doesn’t have enough space to do that. Like he is trapped on that single spot or more likely like he is imprisoned in this role of a dancer – a puppet who is supposed to bring joy to other people.
The appearance of young boys with drums, who look like altar boys attending a procession, underpins my prior associations on the young girls and the lonely dancer. It feels like through bringing the altar boys into the picture that the previous scenes should be forgotten. But is that possible?
Maybe I can look at the scenes from a different point of view if I review the minute with the music. I am bitterly disappointed. It is even worse with the music in background. Straight out of a horror flick. The music underlines even more the desperation, the present fears of the actors and their entrapment in the scene collectively as well as solitary. I feel lost, to some extent drawn into this nightmare. I want to get away from this frightening and oppressing nightmare. I want be able to breathe again. I turn off the minute, my fear decomposes into nothingness and I turn toward the sun - but the bad taste stays.
All of a sudden there is darkness. An unexpected lonely folklore dancer appears. I still got the bad taste of the previous scene in my mouth, the negative thoughts and the fear. Was the dancer to appear on the scene to loosen up the feeling of oppression? His face is not shown. He dances on the spot, continuously turning and turning like he dances just to survive. It seems like he doesn’t have enough space to do that. Like he is trapped on that single spot or more likely like he is imprisoned in this role of a dancer – a puppet who is supposed to bring joy to other people.
The appearance of young boys with drums, who look like altar boys attending a procession, underpins my prior associations on the young girls and the lonely dancer. It feels like through bringing the altar boys into the picture that the previous scenes should be forgotten. But is that possible?
Maybe I can look at the scenes from a different point of view if I review the minute with the music. I am bitterly disappointed. It is even worse with the music in background. Straight out of a horror flick. The music underlines even more the desperation, the present fears of the actors and their entrapment in the scene collectively as well as solitary. I feel lost, to some extent drawn into this nightmare. I want to get away from this frightening and oppressing nightmare. I want be able to breathe again. I turn off the minute, my fear decomposes into nothingness and I turn toward the sun - but the bad taste stays.
Tami Fickinger