THE SQUARE
(Laughter and terror: the grotesque, ie. incongruity, distortion, excess)
The world of the museum of art (its aporia, its boldness—real or fake—its institutional dimension, its business model) as a parable of our contemporary society.
The world of modern art and its uncanny elements used to expose a larger social reality about the human comedy and condition.
A series of scenes where incongruous elements expose hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy
The Square: an art piece turned into a conversation piece, a pretext, an offense, a scandal.
The question of authenticity and truth.
What is inside the square? What does its border fence off?
The square: border or frontier?
The parties at the museum
Wild dancing and/ or polished dinner: same ‘show’? Playing at being someone?
The speech followed by the buffet
The chef’s presentation of his dishes
People don’t care
He must scream to be heard:
Turning up the volume on their hypocrisy?
How loud must you be to be heard in a world saturated with images/videos/violence (staged or not….)?
The dinner scene as paradigmatic and programmatic
Self-referentiality of the tropes and symbols : the jungle/the primitive
Mirrors of the social reality beneath the polite and ‘civilized’ persona.
The contrived dimension of our societal scripts. And their vulnerability/reversibility (the jungle man: bully and then victim/ the polite men turning into attackers, beating him to death… the ellipsis lets us imagine… the unsaid or the unsayable… the issue of censorship… what cannot be imagined and yet exists/takes place)
The video: instrumentalizing the misery of others
The press conference: the soapy feelings of those far removed from the reality of poverty and fear (see the discussion about the young girl’s hair color for example).
An overall indifference to suffering.
A callous world where a cry for help is insignificant
People go about their day.
The little boy: a real call for help (as opposed to the other calls which are just staged to distract/to rob)
The director realizes—too late—that he can really make a difference in this boy’s life. His actions—had he chosen to act—would have been meaningful/would have made a real difference in a real person’s life. He would have had an impact in the real world instead of just impacting the reality within the ‘square’.
Men/Women: is sex just a transaction?
Discrepancy between the intimacy of the sexual act (Anne: “you were inside me”) and the aloofness of the relationship.
Language as a pose: the intricacy of the jargonic language versus the vacuity of its aesthetics and political content.
The question of representation and creation
Illusion and reality
The cleaning services tampering with the art piece: gravel in the real world as opposed to gravel in the museum?
Magritte: ceci n’est pas une pipe
Interview Anne/the director: “what if I take your bag and put it out there… does it become an art object?”
To be continued…
Marie Lienard-Yeterian