The story is set some time in the past, or maybe some time in the future. Were it given a specific time-frame, we would say somewhere between the building of the Berlin wall, the American moonwalk, and the Coca-Cola company's serious ambition to turn the moon into a global advertising logo. The time frame could be inferred by the costumes, or hair side- partings, as nearly nineteen sixties or fifties, though the weird technical props and the fact that fashion repeats itself may just as well lead us to 2060, or sometime like that. But the place is unknown. Like Gotham city we can't quite recognize the location. When one of the journalists breathlessly tells us "It's started" it could be Mauerbau or Prague spring or possibly something else, or some other time.
Set in a large newspaper office, the story entails a number of individuals going to and fro in what we may quickly observe is a moment of violent unrest. The precise nature of this cataclysm remains, as yet, undisclosed. We focus on our central character, the young lift operator, who is never given a name. If literary comparisons can be made, these would be Kundera and Kafka: this is a young character formed by experience into cynicism, detachment, and apathy.
Our young hero (or anti hero) is briefly addressed by numerous characters, who on the other hand pay little attention to him. The lift itself becomes a theater of love, death, trouble and ambition. Among these, the lovers, feeling safe in a power cut, make love despite the presence of the boy. In turn, he is left alone with a corpse by journalist colleagues who are sensitive and upset but still fail to consider that they have left a dead body in the immediate company of a child.
Here, when we hear the lift bell ring we wonder if he will respond, move the lever – drive down. He does. During the drive another power cut comes. We are left in a potential nightmare; a young boy in the dark of a closed space with a cadaver at his feet. The boy stays untouched, only coldly curious. He lights a match to scrutinize the face.
Today, things are probably not dissimilar to the period of the cold war. We continue to live under the shadow of immanent disaster, whether that be of terrorism, the end of oil, revolution, or the vagaries and failures of financial capitalism. How each individual will cope with disaster, whatever it is, whenever it comes, is a question which has as many answers as there are people on this planet. Some will possibly go mad, others party intensively, others horde; some will use the opportunity to be cruel with impunity, others too will respond with activism or resignation. The two journalists at the beginning of the story: one drinks and is full of questions, the other is more silent. Each is an example of an individual response to what is possibly an inexplicable situation.
AUFZUG is, notionally, set in a European location but the context is one of worldwide riot and cataclysm. The closed set of AUFZUG gives the possibility of a kind of puppet house, Kammerspiel atmosphere. The riots outside are locked out. The lift itself is a place of relative safety. But floor by floor, with each passenger and his or her own tableaux and concerns, the atmosphere of mayhem slowly seeps in. Despite the lift boy's seeming complacency each of the individual characters pursue their own passionate agendas. We see a newspaper proprietor, arrogant an opinionated, surrounded by a group of fawning young sycophants. Despite his apparent authority he will end under arrest by what we may assume is a state of police emergency. Later a much older man makes an appearance to declare a strike in the basement of the print workers, thereby revisiting memories of his socialist youth.
A young woman grieves the damage to the heel of her stiletto shoe, clearly the result and emotional trauma of the outside riots. The sudden appearance of a character armed and dressed in riot gear suggests the immanent presence of state authority. Regardless of the outside chaos the French fashion correspondent with single mindedness continues with her sartorial advice. Towards the end, a common police man addresses the boy like an absurd father, and wants him to stand up like a man. Just as the old striker seems to have nostalgia for a socialist past, so the police officer seems to reflect a sentiment for the foregone spirit of European fascism.
Finally the boy leaves his closed environment, which works nearly as an ivory tower.
He steps through the outside wreckage into an unknown night and an unknown destiny. He somehow doesn't seem to care about the moon, the upheavals, the futile protests, the global arrogance. He even claims he has seen it before. It is a style of attitude to be both expected and unexpected of youth, a kind of behavior that may confound the aspirations of an older, perhaps more motivated generation, themselves grown cold from experience.
But such are the solutions of youth: solutions of their own, and of their own making, buying stuff, planning careers, hanging out. This a matter of choice, where other choices seem impossible or even forbidden. On a much more contemporary note, we can frame AUFZUG in the context of today's social upheavals of popular protest in America and Europe, and a scene of powerlessness and individual frustration in the face of global corporatism and its indifference to the environment, personal aesthetics and public accountability.
As to the story finally all is made clear. We briefly end in something of an anti-climax. Our young character walks away from the situation, far-gone in hopelessness and disinterest. Dramatically, the story builds to its crescendo: the conflict of public outrage and state crackdown; the banality of commercial interest and a monumental rape of nature.
Set in a large newspaper office, the story entails a number of individuals going to and fro in what we may quickly observe is a moment of violent unrest. The precise nature of this cataclysm remains, as yet, undisclosed. We focus on our central character, the young lift operator, who is never given a name. If literary comparisons can be made, these would be Kundera and Kafka: this is a young character formed by experience into cynicism, detachment, and apathy.
Our young hero (or anti hero) is briefly addressed by numerous characters, who on the other hand pay little attention to him. The lift itself becomes a theater of love, death, trouble and ambition. Among these, the lovers, feeling safe in a power cut, make love despite the presence of the boy. In turn, he is left alone with a corpse by journalist colleagues who are sensitive and upset but still fail to consider that they have left a dead body in the immediate company of a child.
Here, when we hear the lift bell ring we wonder if he will respond, move the lever – drive down. He does. During the drive another power cut comes. We are left in a potential nightmare; a young boy in the dark of a closed space with a cadaver at his feet. The boy stays untouched, only coldly curious. He lights a match to scrutinize the face.
Today, things are probably not dissimilar to the period of the cold war. We continue to live under the shadow of immanent disaster, whether that be of terrorism, the end of oil, revolution, or the vagaries and failures of financial capitalism. How each individual will cope with disaster, whatever it is, whenever it comes, is a question which has as many answers as there are people on this planet. Some will possibly go mad, others party intensively, others horde; some will use the opportunity to be cruel with impunity, others too will respond with activism or resignation. The two journalists at the beginning of the story: one drinks and is full of questions, the other is more silent. Each is an example of an individual response to what is possibly an inexplicable situation.
AUFZUG is, notionally, set in a European location but the context is one of worldwide riot and cataclysm. The closed set of AUFZUG gives the possibility of a kind of puppet house, Kammerspiel atmosphere. The riots outside are locked out. The lift itself is a place of relative safety. But floor by floor, with each passenger and his or her own tableaux and concerns, the atmosphere of mayhem slowly seeps in. Despite the lift boy's seeming complacency each of the individual characters pursue their own passionate agendas. We see a newspaper proprietor, arrogant an opinionated, surrounded by a group of fawning young sycophants. Despite his apparent authority he will end under arrest by what we may assume is a state of police emergency. Later a much older man makes an appearance to declare a strike in the basement of the print workers, thereby revisiting memories of his socialist youth.
A young woman grieves the damage to the heel of her stiletto shoe, clearly the result and emotional trauma of the outside riots. The sudden appearance of a character armed and dressed in riot gear suggests the immanent presence of state authority. Regardless of the outside chaos the French fashion correspondent with single mindedness continues with her sartorial advice. Towards the end, a common police man addresses the boy like an absurd father, and wants him to stand up like a man. Just as the old striker seems to have nostalgia for a socialist past, so the police officer seems to reflect a sentiment for the foregone spirit of European fascism.
Finally the boy leaves his closed environment, which works nearly as an ivory tower.
He steps through the outside wreckage into an unknown night and an unknown destiny. He somehow doesn't seem to care about the moon, the upheavals, the futile protests, the global arrogance. He even claims he has seen it before. It is a style of attitude to be both expected and unexpected of youth, a kind of behavior that may confound the aspirations of an older, perhaps more motivated generation, themselves grown cold from experience.
But such are the solutions of youth: solutions of their own, and of their own making, buying stuff, planning careers, hanging out. This a matter of choice, where other choices seem impossible or even forbidden. On a much more contemporary note, we can frame AUFZUG in the context of today's social upheavals of popular protest in America and Europe, and a scene of powerlessness and individual frustration in the face of global corporatism and its indifference to the environment, personal aesthetics and public accountability.
As to the story finally all is made clear. We briefly end in something of an anti-climax. Our young character walks away from the situation, far-gone in hopelessness and disinterest. Dramatically, the story builds to its crescendo: the conflict of public outrage and state crackdown; the banality of commercial interest and a monumental rape of nature.