FINALE

In a wrestling ring a woman (Sabine Marte) does battle with a sand-filled punching bag (Bill). Bill’s a real dummy: worn out, beat up, with only one arm. The woman shoves the punching bag, wrestles with it, rolls around with it, over it, along it and on top of it. Bill’s substantially taller and considerably more voluminous than the woman. Now and again he bobbles back and toward her, or swings its arm, but otherwise seems wholly disinterested.
There’s something awkward and disturbing about this little battle video. The movements seem strangely illogical and discomforting, seemingly reversed. “It’s such a funny and a good idea, playing the action backwards. That creates this mutual swing-a-thon with the woman, in particular the dash of sadness when they part at the end,” wrote artist Gertrude Moser-Wagner about Finale. “The battle video runs backwards,” explained Sabine MARTE, “punches and throws reverse into a parry. There are only inverted gestures.” But what’s left of a battle when the original stimulus is gone, when it has neither narrative nor, more importantly, motivation?
A reversed fight is no fight at all, so much is obvious. Instead, which is equally disturbing, a physicality develops between the woman and the slow-moving, greasy-leathery dummy, and it gains sexualized density. I start sympathizing with it, in the same way as Moser-Wagner: “It’s shaped something like a well-fed maggot and appears harmless, so that you feel sorry for it in a way.” I feel even sorrier for Bill when the reduced and analytical music (by Markus Marte, who also operated the camera) starts to resemble the soundtrack of Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Kill Bill? Poor dummy.
(Johanna Schaffer)