For Ever
Video installation, 2000 / 17 min / House in early construction phase, mock wood / Cent ans d’art contemporain, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.
I filmed For Ever with 24 inhabitants from the two communities—French and Flemish— of the city of Brussels. People signed on after seeing advertisements on Brussels TV, in the free Le Vlan newspaper, and on Radio Capitale. The condition for the shoot was as follows: 40-year-old children agreeing to come with their parents. My questions revolved around the territory of childhood, and the apprenticeship of love, hate, and handing-down. On the studio set I had left one empty seat. I never knew who would sit in it and who would start talking. At times the seat became a stand-in character, and at others the place of authority. For Ever is a kind of tragedy about the need for love, Oedipus, and lack. Freed-up words came flying out of the bodies of the Models, and at times went beyond the bounds of the admissible. Within the framework of the Voici exhibition, For Ever gave rise to one or two outraged reactions, corresponding to the onlookers’ experiences: with some, we witnessed the murder of the father and, with others, the murder of the mother. But nobody ever talked about the murder of the children.