Thursday May 10th

‘Thursday May 10th’ is a remake of last seasons second last episode of the Dutch soap series ‘ Onderweg Naar Morgen’. For this video installation I made scale models of all the sets appearing in the episode of May 10th 2007. These reconstructed sets were then used to make a remake of the original episode, using the exact same camera movements as in the original.

Thursday May 10th’ is a film about interiors, there are no actors, no dialogues and no intrigues. The video shows the architecture of the soap ‘Onderweg naar Morgen’, literally reducing it to its spatial structure as mediated by the camera and montage.
The interiors seen on screen exist as a scale model only. Yet, on video their scale appears elusive. It is hard to determine their actual size. On screen, it appears hard to see the difference between the reconstructed soap sets and the original life-size sets, this way highlighting the character of the original as a staging of the everyday life. The video points attention to this staged character while at the same time demonstrating how this staging, notwithstanding its clearly staged character, convinces as ‘ how it is’, as daily life.

Reducing the soap to its spatial and visual (camera + montage) architecture results in a kind of abstraction that is at the same time also very concrete (interiors with furniture). This abstract/concrete architecture turns the soap in a continuous unfolding of virtual space/time. Lacking characters or narrative, the video takes the viewer along with this unfolding, inviting to dwell in the morphing and becoming of space/time rather than look at it as the backdrop to the representation of a story.
check : vimeo.com/2125311?pg=embed&sec=