5:30 min, HD and 35 mm, © Hund & Horn
Dropping Furniture displays the destruction of a habitat. The film is meant to symbolize the loss of existence (Production note).
What remains when nothing is left and life is literally turned upside down? Dropping Furniture initially focuses on two empty rooms. Quiet, barely perceptible sounds create subtle suspense. After a few seconds, when we have almost become accustomed to the seemingly existential emptiness of the seemingly deserted dwelling, two pieces of furniture fall into the room at the back from above the edge of the picture in slow motion. Then a chandelier in the large room at the front floats to the floor, shatters and gives the starting signal for a choreography of destruction structured by two fixed shots. As if by magic, a sofa, a reading lamp or an armchair with stuffed animals float to the ground.
The furniture of an obviously old-fashioned, stuffy living room is disposed of, only to shatter on the floor, orchestrated by a soundtrack synchronized with the slowed-down image and equipped with a lot of reverb. When the weighty wall shoring finally shatters, a telephone begins to ring in real time – a final indication of communication. Even the houseplants and the aquarium that fall down towards the end provide no clues as to the originator and motivation of this termination ritual, which harbors a subtle punchline. It is true that, similar to the cliché of the rock star throwing the television out of the window, we are ridding ourselves of a suffocating world of things in an act of destructive liberation. On the other hand, it is precisely the debris that weighs down the empty space anew, filling it with the spreading garbage of its own history. At the end, after the fade to black, we think we hear more objects hitting the ground. They sound like the thunder of a cleansing thunderstorm (Thomas Edlinger)
