StartPoint Prize 2016

Luzie Meyer

The video Balcony is loosely based on the eponymous theatre play by Jean Genet, set in a luxury bordello where visitors can play various roles giving them the illusion of dominance. Three men – a bishop, general and judge – enact their sadistic or masochistic fantasies with a prostitute, played by the artist herself. She is the actor, narrator and camerawoman. The entire shoot is documented by another camera, which often takes on the main role, disrupting the fiction of the game. The overlapping of several perspectives as well as other filmic devices (dubbing which is sometimes out of sync with the action, narrative voice, music, sudden cuts, etc.) turn this brief etude into a multilayered spectacle with haunting content.