The exhibition Farewell Letter to Swiss Workers by Frédéric Moser and Philippe Schwinger is perhaps fitting to show in such dismal economic times.  The exhibition centers around the film Alles wird wieder gut (Everything Will be Fine), a fictionalized depiction of a small, poor East German town, what a teenager would disparagingly call a "Kaff" (most likely throwing in the prefix "Scheiß" to really emphasize it): a crappy small village with nothing going on.   The main characters of the film try in vain to figure out a way to escape their doldrums, lack of cash or employment and the general malaise that results from an unstimulating environment.  True to form they decide the best thing to do is to throw a Party in the village's only hangout spot, a party with a capital P, a techno party.

The parents of the young techno-lovers are picketing in front of their former factory, which was shut down seventeen years before as the good old days of full employment under the state came to a close.  Joined together in solidarity over a trash can ablaze in the snow, with picket signs reading "Keine Arbeit, Keine Zukunft" (No Work, No Future), an English reporter approaches to ask them questions about their resumed strike.  As they speak to him, the sound fades to the reporter's thoughts as he tunes out their pleas and listens to himself describe their situation and their pathetic lives in reductive metaphors.

The other film on view follows an actress who trained to work in an abysmal milk factory, milking hundreds of cows in a mechanized environment, not speaking a word for hours, riding her bike home to nap for a few seconds, then back to the factory.  The factory where this was filmed is literally a kilometer away from the village portrayed in Alles wird wieder gut, which makes me wonder why neither of these films make an effort to portray the place itself--all the attention is only on the actors.  This perhaps belies the artists' background in theater, where all meaning and magnitude emanates from the actor, unlike film where the setting and cinematography ultimately defines the mood and connotation of a piece.  The two films together set a somewhat cursory scene but would benefit from some long shots of the landscape, or other signs to situate the action. 

The exhibition plays off two cultural referents: Lenin's letter to the Swiss workers about international solidarity against repressive regimes and Godard's film Tout va bien (Everything is Fine), about an American reporter (Jane Fonda) and a factory strike.  It's meant to be political, "questioning the notion of social utopias", engaging with the issue of the value of work and its social legitimacy, which are quite important questions to be posing especially at a time like this.  Unfortunately the film is already two years old, so it doesn't address the specific issues and doubts with the capitalist system that are bearing down on social consciousness at the moment.  This is made up for with a free poster available at the gallery of a stylized stock chart showing declining values in pixellated form.

The trouble I also find here, is that the films don't necessarily generate much sympathy or even an identification with the characters.  They are actors playing the roles of real people, "fictionalizing the real", yet their performance remains unconvincing and the concept behind it is unclear.  To be forthcoming I also had no direct English translation of the film Alles wird wieder gut, so I probably missed something important, but the other film is entirely without dialogue, and both have their faults.  I found myself unfortunately in the position of the English reporter, reducing the plight of the people to stereotypes (the rural East German accents don't help).  Yet it's almost as if the artists forgot that the medium of film itself is reductive--where image is all important.  Here it seems as though the image has become an after-thought, the filming is too straight, the acting somewhat awkward, the production value low.  Add to that the hay bales provided for seating in the gallery and it seems downright patronizing.  The exhibition purposefully offers no solutions, and shies away from making strong political statements, but the ambiguousness is also a detriment, as the onus is left on the audience to find the import of the films and to somehow connect them to our own, very distant, lives.

--Natalie Hegert

(*Images, from top to bottom: Frédéric Moser and Philippe Schwinger, Alles wird wieder gut (from the installation Farewell Letter to The Swiss Workers), 2006, digital video, 19’56", 16/9 Anamorph, German speaking with English subtitles, courtesy Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris.  Frédéric Moser and Philippe Schwinger, Farewell letter to Swiss Workers, March 19 - May 23, 2009; Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, exhibition views.)