The Trial

2013

Video

9’

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The video seems to be a sketch in which a main character, dressed in a severe, military-like uniform, harangues three vending machines. It explores the exaggerated gestures of the revolutionary speaker and archaic language typically employed in communist ideological discourse. Included in the dialogue are quotes from four political and literary figures: Mao Zedong, Maxim Gorky, Winston Churchill, and Mark Twain. Following a simple dialectic principle of pitting the judge’s arguments against those of the vending machines, we witness an exchange of irreconcilable ideologies in which neither party understands the other.