Astrid van Nimwegen - description

Description ‘Intro zundap’ 18/09/2012

In June this year I recorded a single shot of a man driving on his zundap motorbike. We see the motorbike standing in front of a shed with two big doors, one white door and one grey door, the weather is not that shiny so the atmosphere of the scene seems a bit depressed although the video starts with the sound of singing birds. A one legged man walks on crutches into the scene, the cheerful song ‘Volare’, from the band ‘the Gipsy Kings’ starts to play, the man steps on his old motorbike, he hangs his crutches on the left side of the bike and puts on his helmet. With his one leg he pushes the bike forward into movement till it runs. He drives by close to the camera and then out of the frame. The title ‘Ordinary Life’ appears in big white letters while the music still plays, mixed with the sound of the motorbike. The man drives back into the shot and a barking, black dog with a white tale runs towards him. The man looks at the dog for a moment but keeps driving, the dog sneezes and the name ‘Astrid van Nimwegen’, again in white letters, appears. The dog walks out of the shot and the man keeps driving circles continuously.

The shot is recorded from a tripod, using a wide lens. I choose the scene and gave the man the assignment to drive in circles in front of the camera. When I first saw this shot after recording it, it was very much ‘just what it was’ and that is why I played around a bit with it and put a soundtrack under it and some text also. Suddenly it seemed the intro of a film. The combination of the image, sound and text gave the shot a different meaning. The depressed atmosphere is very much in contradiction with the happy, joyful music. The title Ordinary Life also contradicts with what the viewer sees; a one legged man driving circles on a bike is not that Ordinary. The shot does not have any context yet and seems therefore extra weird. I want to continue working on this subject and shoot multiple scenes. Not necessarily to build a narrative structure out of multiple shots but just to see what happens if I simply collect more of them in this same manner.

I seem to like working on pieces in which I create particular actions in everyday environments, although the action and context doesn’t seem to fit eachother. It delivers weird, absurdist shots that seem to become some sort of reality somehow. Confusion about what really is happening here is mostly the case. Is the character victim of the situation or is he happy in what he is doing or is there just nothing going on? ‘the drama is in the staging itself’

Research at the moment: the work of Peter Greenaway