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“There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” "I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians." Life is but a series of glimpses: you can never know the entirety of another, nor even yourself. Film, fragment as it is, is a profound glimpse. And yet when film presents glimpses of time past we can easily forget that history proceeded. Those subject to the camera continued thereafter. This notion of forgetting what follows is profound in this circumstance: Austria was among the first to feel the apocalypse rattling through century indelible. Supposedly, it incubated said cataclysm and then, in the midst of relative ruins, it found refuge in extremities, an apocalypse sicced upon others. But, of course, heinous as we know the regime to be, we should not shield our eyes nor dehumanise: this was a nation not of alien savages but callous humans, little different than the imperial many. These are not the home movies of monsters but those who may have borne something latent. It’s tempting to think, with all the romanticism we imbue in culture, that these were perhaps dissidents of sorts, archivists clairvoyant: but, no, behind and before the camera may be people who killed, who plundered or simply believed - and that is a quality that has not ceased in the present. What will become of our home movies? I would dub this film an experiment in ethics, in the ethics of showing and reproducing, in spectating. We all know that beauty, intimacy, is not exclusive to the righteous but to understand that creator of sight may have done untold damage is to understand the treacherous effect of image and beauty. I have decontextualised this material, alternating footage from the 20s and 40s with relative abandon in an attempt to articulate a sense of relation - of continuity and similarity - which film so readily sheds - and likewise explore that worrying tendency to obscure. I don’t endeavour to besmirch but explore ambiguity, the atrophy of interiority that comes for all. We should not scorn the uncertainty of knowing others, freighting as it is. When we see through others an image as innocent as that of a child are we distanced from what we deem ailing? When we look upon these children, in circumstances beyond them, do we ought to acknowledge the similarity of victims elsewhere - is that our obligation? When we see these displays of innocence and suited evil our romantic narratives appear to melt, for both are banal. The archive is a plateau, a place wherein the moments of a soldier and child are aligned, wherein distinction verges towards moot: victim, perpetrator - objects. What does it mean when our surrogates to the past, our guides, are those we reject? Their gaze is privileged, insightful in proximity but abject in how it transgresses upon us. To remain secure we are selfish, unwilling to accept our own latency; if you are to believe that perpetrators of past atrocities were some other species you will soon become them than understand them. https://abenteueralltag.at/de/films