Better Days, 2002

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Better Days
2002
several found footage videos of various duration
for theatre play Better Days, written by Richard Dresser,
and directed by Thomas Ostermeier at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, 2002
Colour, sound
Aspect ratio 4:3

Rosefeldt’s contribution to Thomas Ostermeier’s Schaubühne production is a blazing display of annihilation. As a result of the play’s dilapidated setting, few employment possibilities are at hand and the 'white trash' protagonists are driven to arson in order to commit insurance fraud. Echoing their hopeless and destructive attempts to resurrect better times, Rosefeldt’s assembled videos of blasts, burning houses and exploding cars consume the entire stage with their enlarged projections. In one scene, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven blasts out – a vain prospect of ambition – whilst the artist’s eclectic fusion of flying debris drowns the mobile home set in a saturated inferno. For the final sequence, Rosefeldt recycles material from his video installation Detonation Deutschland (1996), this time reversing the collapsing buildings to question the potential of resurrection.

E. Lapper