‘As Habitual’ is a set piece, a documentary fiction, about how to adapt oneself to unknown regions without surrendering to them. This movie is situated in Mombasa and Zanzibar, where you can find a material called kanga that hovers between language and architecture, and in fact turns into a habit. Kanga is a piece of cloth printed with a pattern and a saying, ready to wear or to be displayed, for carrying a baby, protection against the sun or against being seen. Doing this implies however that one allows others to read what you want to say. A habit now has become something that you can put on and take back off again. It has incorporated a critical fiction, involving the reader as well. Giving in to its material, the movie is not following a script. Instead it’s edited according to a pattern relying on habits and habituality, of bodies and houses. The pattern, that language that makes both walls and veils to billboards, turns into an architecture of layers that cover the international style and re-orient it. It turns veiling into a form of perception. While veils and walls are supposed to protect religion and possessions, the sayings involve these veils and walls in a public conversation in which everyone participates.
27 min. 21 sec., French, 1997
Dir., text and camera: Eva Meyer and Eran Schaerf
Voice: Eva Meyer
Translation: Paulette Kayser
Editing & Sound: Jurgen Persijn
Production: Kunstverein München & Le Collège/FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims
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