Museum Guard
"Unexplored aspects of everyday-life: What do guards in a museum do when they assume no one watches? A snapshot."
Alexander Gratzer
Who, when finding themselves alone and unobserved in a large, reverberant room, can resist the temptation to clap their hands or raise their voice? Surely nobody. So nearly everyone can identify with the anonymous subject of Museum Guard, Alexander Gratzer´s animated film, who turns the exhibition space into his very own stage. Remaining utterly disciplined, at a certain moment he´s nevertheless provoked by just a touch of rebellion and breaks into a feisty "What´s up?" (here sung by Johannes Forster). In this recital only his head and arms are permitted to move, and as custodian of the space he never leaves his station.
Likewise, the camera angle remains unchanged, never revealing what sort of museum this might be. Except for the huge gallery sofas, the framing ultimately shows only bare walls, and therefore one might also want to read into this a statement on the museum and gallery business. In this room, austere but drawn askew, the only thing that is actually visible to the viewer is the museum guard himself.
With his pointed lips, head tilted for dramatic emphasis, and existence firmly rooted in the mundane, he seems to be a relative of those figures drawn by cartoonist Loriot. However, while those people react to minor disturbances with despair, the performance of Gratzer´s hero is nothing less than a small comic triumph over an employment world that operates strictly by the book. (Dorian Waller)
Museumswärter
2017
Austria
3 min