Milena Bonilla (Colombia, NL)
The Guests
‘During my first visit to Cape Town I filmed a video in the Karoo desert in which a table fully dressed with silver and porcelain crockery, meals and wine is filmed as the central object in an otherwise empty landscape. The table appeared as the only “human” element in the middle of the wilderness. I left the table the whole day and night and returned to film it again the next day. I thought that it was a tacit invitation for something to happen. Maybe some animals would come during the night and eat the great piece of pork displayed on the table, maybe a group of Jackals would come and pass over everything, I was imagining a bunch of baboons drinking the wine and playing with the bell for service placed over there… when negative thoughts invaded me I thought that at least the flies will come and ruin the feast, or that some strong wind will take care of the table… Nothing happened. Some how for the desert and its own life, that table clearly didn’t belong there and didn’t have an authorization to step in. Or maybe the table worked as the desert wanted, as a mistake in a general understanding of time, as a clash between ‘civilization’ and survival.
