1999 (08′)

The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke called childhood a ”prettified mistake“. The situation of this video is so terrible, because neither the children in the video nor the viewer have the chance to simply step out of the created relationship that was forced upon them. Only the unaccomplishable, that these pictures partake as pictures of the beauty and the pain, permits a way out of the dilemma. In Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s painting “Swing” the skirts of the swinging fly thus opening a view into the paradise for the cavalier looking up from below. The merry Hedonism of this 18. Century erotism seems comparatively innocent in relation to the dark suction created by Marie Jo Lafontaine’s pictures. As in early Ingmar Bergman films … (Georg Bussmann)