The Ambassador’s body is an experimental documentary in three parts:
- The subject of the work is introduced in an interview with historian Yves Cohen, in it the question of political authority and the ways it is expressed in past governments (in France, Germany, United-states, Russia...) and mostly at the end of the nineteenth century. He questions the image of leadership by looking at recent social events – such as the Brazilian revolts, the Arab spring or the Ukrainian revolution and how a leaderless “intelligent” crowd organizes them. The interview concludes as an open-ended discussion on the role of the contemporary historian in these political events.
- A series of interviews of Ukrainian women - artist, minister’s pres secretary, intelligent agency officer, political activist and university professor, etc., who took part of the events that reshaped the country in the past few years. A personal perspectives of the political world is born from their first hand witness accounts of the events.
- Third part is based on a reenactment of the fresco The Allegory of Good and Bad Government. This three-wall renaissance fresco commissioned by the local government and painted by the artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti at the Palazzo Pubblico of Sienna. Between 1287 et 1355 the city of Sienna was governed by 9 elected officials who held office for 2 months at a time, they became the heart of a council protecting the rights of its citizens. Our images will consist of reenactments with extras posing in order to reproduce scenes from the allegory of good government and part of the representation of bad government as is it shown on the wall next to it.
At this stage of the project the three parts are clearly separated - the allegorical representation, the witnesses experience and the words of the historian. We are planning to edit the video knowing that it will be viewed in a space and in combination with accessories and objects created for the filming set. As an installation the different elements will become as one personal narrative perceived by the spectator. We call this fragmentation "cinema as spare parts" letting us the possibility to question the medium of cinema and the final form of our work.
Documentation