go postal
27 min., mini dv, 2009
Continuous covert surveillance, long established social services abruptly ended or greatly reduced, a confused populace, increasingly uncertain, anxious, dissatisfied, angry; it is this stark landscape of post-industrial capitalism losing its way that the artist Ulrike Solbrig reflects upon in her video work, go postal (2009). From the artist's apartment, several stories above street level in Berlin's Mitte, Solbrig focused a static camera on the entrance of a local branch of the Deutsche Post, the privatized national postal service. This centrally located office, with recently abbreviated hours, now closes at noon on Saturdays. The recordings, made on several days, start just after closing time. The video was assembled, using analytical jump cuts, into the 27 minutes final version. Disappointed patrons are shown reacting in frustrated disbelief, comic impatience, passive acceptance, solitary anger, or communal discussion, all the while, surreptitiously observed by Solbrig's camera, and perhaps others, a microcosm of a world uneasily adrift.
Alan Marsik
The video has been presented at Dank an, Galerie Isabella Czarnowska, Berlin.
Ulrike Solbrig, Germany: Chausseestr. 110-I, 10115 Berlin, tel.: +49 1557 43 5656 3 ulrike@solbrig.de