KURATOR  curating + research

What Is Democracy? (2009), Oliver Ressler
single channel video (118 min), and installation, also available online

http://www.ressler.at/what_is_democracy_film/

Date:

2009

“What is democracy?” is in fact a double question. On the one hand, the question relates to the current conditions of the parliamentary representative democracies that are critically scrutinized by this project. On the other hand, the question traces different approaches to what a more democratic system might look like and which organizational forms it may require.
The project addressed numerous activists and political analysts in 18 cities around the world - Amsterdam, Berkeley, Berlin, Bern, Budapest, Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, Moscow, New York, Paris, Rostock, San Francisco, Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Thessaloniki and Warsaw - one question: “What is democracy?”. The video interviews have been recorded since January 2007.
Even though all subjects were asked the same question, the result was a multiplicity of different perspectives and viewpoints of people living in states that are usually labeled as “democracies”. This pool of interviews builds the starting point for eight videos, which are presented in an 8-channel video installation. The installation (re)presents a kind of global analysis of the deep political crises of the Western democratic model.