Slackers

In the architecture of artist studio, intermediate spaces where life and work are superimposed registers, many promises of reflection, careers and friendships circulate. Artistic practices inevitably tied to specific situations, economies and times, come together fortuitously in spaces that are more or less conducive to turning into exhibition spaces. Crossed by Linklater's Slacker (1990), where the camera follows one character without a clear goal, then drops him or her for another, making way for the next, everyone seems to be going about their business, pursuing the course of their own fetishes, theories and modes of existence. Where do they go once they're off-screen? Slackers is less an attitude than a frame containing immediacy. What posture, (auto)fiction or place do we desire to inhabit in our own lives? It's like every choice or decision you make... the thing you choose not to do... fractions off and becomes its own reality, you know... and just goes on from there forever (1) The narrative drifts, filled with dissonance, already atomized by the constraints of the place, the city and, here again, the idiosyncrasies of each individual. Phenomena of attraction and isolation, infiltration and staging put into tension the beginnings of fictions, trailers, language and image types at the intersection of surfaces. Fiona Vilmer, October 2023 (1) Extract from Richard Linklater's opening monologue in Slacker, 1990.