Supermarket, 2001

Supermarket

2001

several found footage videos of various duration

for theatre play Supermarket, written by Biljana Srbljanović,
and directed by Thomas Ostermeier at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, 2001

Colour, mute

Aspect ratio 4:3

Junk advertising sampled from television, telephone sex ads, soap operas and extracts from Rosefeldt’s earlier work Global Soap (2000/2001) contribute towards the artist’s video backdrop for Thomas Ostermeier’s Schaubühne adaption of Biljana Srbljanovic’s play Supermarket. The oversized screen adds to the hyperbole as the production descends into a soap opera of un-realistic, dramatic magnitude, eroding life with absurd repetitiveness to the point of exploitative, emotional melodrama. The protagonist (Leo Schwartz – a dissident from the former Eastern bloc, now living somewhere in Western Europe) channels the playwright’s own shifting identities as a native of former Yugoslavia. What unfolds is a play of collisions: East meets West, and reality and fantasy lock horns as Leo struggles to break out of a never-ending loop. The play mimics Srbljanovic’s take on today’s society: everything is possible, and all ideological combinations are being exhausted. Rosefeldt’s mash-up of videos further heightens the overload and enhances the tensions, as the performance alternates between live theatre and the films behind. Srbljanovic’s metaphorical envisioning of the (Western) world as a supermarket of ideas, is echoed in Rosefeldt’s choice of consumption: advertising, exploitation, a wealth of goods and constant availability.

E. Lapper