Four Seasons

Date: 2009
Length: 12:15 min.
Format:  16:9
Specification: Farbe, Sound

Keren Cytter confronts the viewer with a bizarre medley of cinematographic staples plucked from various film genres. Visual vocabularies from film noir, thriller, soap opera and melodrama are intertwined in a surrealist mishmash, whose narrative becomes more and more incoherent as the video unfolds. A close up of a knife suggests potential violence, yet no one is hurt. The melodramatic moment of a candle-lit dinner is not followed by a scene of intimacy. In a Hitchcockian moment of suspense, a woman climbs a flight of stairs, yet no danger ensues. This pictorial medley is shot through with the music of adventure films of the 1960s. However, the two characters starring in the video are never in any danger. Cytter provides none of the expected resolutions to the visual clichés, thus further emphasizing the artificiality of the cinematographic world.
The key to this absurdist performance lies in a voice-over description of the complexity of various architectural structures. The narrator informs the viewer that not all structures have windows that allow the viewer to observe the outside world. Sometimes the openings in the structure serve as a mirror that turns the viewers’ gazes onto themselves. Reflecting this metaphor, Cytter's video, with its complex and incongruous structure, provides no commentary on the surrounding world, but instead exposes the workings of the human psyche. 
OC