Mirage

This short film explores aspects from The Wall (1963), a novel by the Austrian author Marlene Haushofer, within the current context of uncertainty and change. In this psycho-sociological novel Haushofer engages with the implication of a major disaster which wipes out the majority of the world population. The narrator in the story, a woman in her 40s happens at the time to be staying at a small holding in the mountains and survives by sheer chance. What has rescued her is an invisible wall that separates this alpine valley from the rest of the world. Haushofer does not make it clear whether what she creates is a dystopian view of a future, a radical criticism of modern civilization or the depiction of how a person in the state of catatonic depression perceives the world.

A today’s equivalent can be found in the shimmering shield inherent to online mediation with its mirage of a past reality. Highlighting yet another kind of barrier, the subtitled soundscape layers two languages, English and German. This forever self renewing membrane caught in the inadequacy of translation is more personal to the artist and her experience of living with a bilingual brain. The film incorporates screen-grabs gathered in Google Street Map and self generated digital video footage. Made in 2021 with the help of a stipend from The Brunswick Club in Bristol.

Length: 11’21”