Emmanuel Van Der Auwera
Bring us to ourselves, Mikhaïl - Film - 2009
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 11
Film
In an airport somewhere, Mikhail Gorbachev's puppet monologues in the dark, gripped by the threat of the catastrophe erupting outside. Unable to react, powerless, he awaits the creeping dissolution of his world, his only succor being his puppeteers. Bring us to ourselves, Mikhail is a video essay, somewhere between docufiction and a filmed puppet show. Here, the roles are reversed: the pretence is full-size; whoever enters it intrudes into a scene that substitutes itself for reality This project originated in an advertisment photograph for Louis vuitton in which Gorbachev playing himself goes past the Berlin Wall. the representation of History is the exclusive prerogative of power. A voice, culture, or corresponding system governs their relations to unreality by condensing events and founding principles into pictorial narratives; basically, into myths. A hero on stage alternates the masks of comedy and tragedy until the bitter end: and this is the primordial structure of almost every story.
