film presentation: "déjà vu" from Lisl Ponger

"déjà- vu", Director: Lisl Ponger, 1999, 23 Min. (Color)


In a subtropical country, white visitors push toward a place where dark-skinned workers pour out the contents of their harvest baskets. They look curiously as if wanting to check the tea leaves. Every so often they pull out their cameras whether they be in front of large game animals, people riding on camels, people wearing elaborate jewelry or everyday work. Sometimes they put themselves in the picture – for at home later when they proudly show their “exotic” material. This pose is part of a model that has been around for centuries of Western travel and depiction - the tourist in search of the stranger. Lisl Ponger reworks found footage of amateur pictures by Western tourists, traces their fascinated gaze toward the stranger and archives a collection of exotic otherness. This is enhanced by a series of voices at a subtle distance. They speak in many languages about experiences with different forms of colonialisation – ranging from the viewpoint of one dominated in one’s own country to one who has been exiled and made a stranger.