Hedda Roman
Apartment Monologue
2018

4K HDR Video, 65 Zoll, 12 Min

In Apartment Monologue German duo Hedda Schattanik and Roman Szczesny have cinematically imagined longing. One may be tempted to call this work a love story, but then again, this would read wrongly for a narrative that is poetically uncertain, disjointed and unconventional in its portrayal of slippery relationships. From the outset we are introduced into the warm light of an abandoned but comfortable apartment. We know it is cosy by the soft carpet, the legs of designer furniture, and other details of everyday life.

The work opens with a scene of a partially open blind, the aluminium type that easily kinks. [...] Other scenes pan across lush European landscapes with patches of red, pink and orange flowers. We watch as they become drenched in an unruly rain shower, before returning ‘home’ to the warm bedroom of the vacant apartment. The doona on the bed appears to have had a body recently beneath it. The technology in the bedroom is whirring, the sound bars of an equaliser moving up and down to the sound of a voice. Whose voice do we hear? Who is it that is asking, ‘Why did he leave me alone?’ Is it the computer on the desk speaking? Or is it the large brown floating eyeball that rotates in circles stating, ‘All the world [has] lost interest in me’? Does this eye surveil the apartment? Is it the apartment that speaks?

Cherine Fahd

About Hedda Roman

Hedda Schattanik and Roman Szczesny transpose and expand through photography and video the immediate but cerebral quality of cinematic storytelling.

Other Artworks by Hedda Roman

In past Exhibition

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