TEN IN LOVE

’Ten in love’ stages ten actors in a former convent space, wearing prosthetic elements as finger gloves, extended arms or unusual shoes. The dining room of a convent school in Graz constitutes the anatomical background for a mysterious ritual, in which the characters interact without making a sound, without any apparent cause or purpose, constantly flirting with inertia. As indicated by a voice-over, “gestures mask intention”, the characters in the film seem to interact more with the objects around them than with each other. On the occasion that they do seem to acknowledge one other, the interaction is ritualized and deliberate; they dress each other, embrace strangely, and offer each other peculiar votives. The objects in the film take on a crypto-religious function, seeming like relics from an unknown liturgy. Arm extensions are extrapolated from a leather box, delicate hurdles criss-cross the space, a man’s own face appears on his shirt, like the ancient Greek figure of Baubo. Like the deliberate actions of the people, spotlights fade in and out, highlighting the movements of each character. The soundtrack overlapping the images is a staggered poetry, sometimes sounding as simple as nursery rhymes. A mechanical hum escalates and pulses with the actions of the characters