++++ This braggart who tells the story in Jeanne Faust's video is anything but likeable. The story of the ultimate pick-up which begins under the pretence of wanting to take photographs of the chosen person and which ends in a hotel. He puts himself in a pose, licks his lips with self-importance and tells two versions: the mad stallion story to the silent colleague, and the sensitive, feeling man to the interested waitress. Basically, the narrative serves to present a certain image of himself to the listener. In any case. It is not a matter of the content, not really.
The Hamburg artist, Jeanne Faust, too, who was born in 1968, pretends that she is telling stories in her films. But she is not doing that at all. Neither in Rodeo at Städel, nor in My Private Satellite, the work which she is showing at the Kunstverein. In this latter film she observed the residents of a new residential settlement near Hamburg which was erected in the middle of nowhere over the past two years. On the basis of her notes she developed a script which she had played by amateur actors for the film.
Various figures wander through the residential settlement, disappear from the picture in order to pop up once again in another place. The camera follows a person and then, when somebody else comes by, turns to this new person. This trick is well known from cinema, for instance, in Robert Altman's Short Cuts. And we are used to a new action being introduced by it. But with Faust, it leads nowhere. Over and over again, the beginnings of narratives can be recognized which all come to nothing and are carefully deconstructed.
Faust is an able narrator of non-stories. None of her episodes can be made into a complete series. What we see are marginal figures in a marginal settlement performing marginal actions. Even breaking into cars has something completely unspectacular and laconic.
What we feel is the need for information and knowledge, and the disappointment and the frustration when neither of these needs is satisfied. And so there is really nothing to add to the final dialogue in Rodeo, "Do you know the story?" — "No." — "Okay."
Videos by Jeanne Faust at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and Städelsches Kunstinstitut, until 25 August. jdv