Colourful, tactile and caring: a quirky collection of vintage eBay purchases put to film.
Soft Film is a short 16mm film by Sara Cwynar, who lives in New York. In it, we see how collectible objects from eBay or from second-hand stores are combined and presented in a colourful studio context. In the meantime, a male voiceover reads from a script written by Cwynar. She corrects him now and again, interrupting his ironic male narrative.
Sara Cwynar is interested in how objects circulate via the Internet, in the lives that they now have, different from the lives they used to have. She collects, arranges and archives her eBay purchases of old objects according to a logic that is based on colour, form, material, vintage and use.
Soft Film also reveals a fascination with soft misogyny, a soft hatred of women that has manifested itself in recent decades and returns to us by way of the kitsch and vague textures of old objects. It is a video essay that poses pertinent questions about the cycles within capitalism, and about feminism. Why care about some discarded object? And what power systems are lurking behind these things?
in loop 12:00 - 22:00
US, 2016, 7’
Courtesy of the artist and Foxy production, New York.
