PRO TESTING

Pro Testing (2010) consists largely of a circular panning shot from the center of a circle of protesters holding up placards. Most of these show photos of a demonstration in favor of the “Gaza Aid Flotilla” that was stopped by the Israeli Navy. The protesters restaged the event in the form of a large model of a ship decked with Turkish and other flags being stopped by pirates with Israeli flags. This protest was in turn violently stopped by the police force. The protesters chant the Broodthaers-inspired trias of “bateau – tableau – drapeau” and images from Broodthaers’ A Voyage of the North Sea book/film are handed out. The demonstration-for-the-film is as staged as the protest on the pictures, though for different reasons both are far from “regular”, easily neutralized protest events. Like many of Schaerf’s works, including those with Meyer, Pro Testing shows actors and extras engaging with the dialectic of event and pseudo-event. Their work stresses that today the event is, paradoxically, best viewed as a mutated pseudo-event. The pseudo-event delineates an arena in which an event might occur. (Source: Sven Lütticken)