The Interview - Thesis - Sequence 2

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The Interview: Edith Schneider

Part of The Stateless Comedy Thesis

The Interview was part of my 5th Year Thesis "The Stateless Comedy" at the Architectural Association in London and showcases clearly the importance of communicating in a range of media. It is an interview of Edith Schneider, who was both formally and informally stateless due to being part of the German Minority in Romania. She and her parents lived in 4 different nations without physically moving and the interview further showcases the impact when dividing a society in a top down effort to introduce and implement an imagined community claiming to preserve the collective status quo.

The Interview addresses and highlights several topics within collective and individual identity, the nation-state, the usage of frontiers, autonomy, migration, displacement and not least the situation of the marginalised. It becomes evident how we use the same politics, social structures, programs, items and architectural tools to both include and exclude. It creates a social trajectory of displacement where we have a twofold society being fed by the same core.

The clips below starts with an excerpt from the full material and is then followed by a set of very short clips which were made to be part of my final presentation which had a full presentation time frame of 12 minutes for the entire thesis.

1) Excerpt "The Interview"; divided into the 3 sequences "Ceausescu?", "Freedom?", "Migration?", 11:02 min.

2) Frontiers; 58 s.

3) The German; 32 s.

4) The Dictator; 27 s.

5) Control; 31 s.

6) Restriction; 39 s.

7) The Displaced; 1:11 min.

Excerpt