Produced by Olaf Breuning
Cinematographer: Olaf Breuning
Sound: Olaf Breuning
Editing: Olaf Breuning
Home 1 copyright: 2004, Studio Olaf Breuning
32 minutes, Color, Two channel
Home 2 copyright: 2007, Studio Olaf Breuning
30 minutes, Color
Home 1 production stillHome 1 was the work by Swiss video artist Olaf Breuning that both made me laugh and got me down. It is a video installation on which he spent more than two years traveling the world and on which I spent equally as much time wondering..
It is a two-screen video projection. On one screen we see the main character roaming around aimlessly through a deserted villa. He speaks to us in a dreamlike manner, engaging us in a Grande story. These dreams are shown simultaneously on the second screen. There the same actor performs a wide variety of roles, from a cowboy in the Wild West, to a drug dealer in a city by night or a tourist in Peru and Las Vegas.
They all add up to an absurd, hilarious and delusional story, they are full of references to film genres and (sub)cultures, they are a blend of documentary and fiction, of harsh reality and dream and artificiality.
Home 2"This is all very scenic, but, I need metal, I need steel in my life."
Home 2 is a video which, like Home 1, tells a story of a man traveling around the world. This time the actor takes us with him, while he travels as a tourist through Africa and wonders (among other places) through Tokyo. He is engaged with his surroundings, often in a painful way. He uses the people around him as puppets, acts like your 'typical' tourist overseas and makes it painstakingly clear.
Whereas Home 1 is supported by a haunting, beautiful soundtrack and has an almost mystical feeling to it, Home 2 is more an anthropological film, that makes mockery of our (the Western) way of living and lack of respect for other cultures. Or I could be totally wrong and just make clear the cliche. Should we just giggle about the bizarre image of a naked Amish boy wearing an E.T. mask, or about a white guy handing out dollars to black kids on a dump? The works never explain themselves, so it is maybe a good thing to end with a quote by filmmaker John Cassavetes:
"When you see something that's different, and you can't get it out of your mind, you're still angry with that son of a gun. But.. you know.. ten years later you remember it, and you think "hm I saw something that's interesting"."
