Wake Up! Hooligans, 2010

video, black & white + sound, 10ʼ05ʼʼ, PAL, 16:9

Wake Up! Hooligans is a fictional documentary referencing two Polish documentaries from the 1950ʼs: Uwaga Chuligani! / Look out, Hooligans! (1955, Jerzy Hoffman and Edward Skórzewski) and Ludzie z pustego obszaru / People from an empty zone (1957, Kazimierz Karabasz and Władysław Ślesicki).

Wake up! Hooligans is a narrative about the City of Rotterdam which uses satire to introduce the notion of vandalism and its potential for disrupting the supposed neutrality and the regulation structuring the Dutch public sphere. The video follows a group of citizens hanging out in the surroundings of Rotterdam’s public sculptures. The narrator describes the protagonists as hooligans, trying to vandalize Rotterdamʼs public sphere; their behavior jars with the moral and patronizing voiceover commentary (taken from Polish documentaries from the 1950ʼs). 

– video stills