The stage is set like a late night talk show on television with an interviewer who tries to get to the heart of the account of a young woman, who, as her story emerges, turns out to be an impassioned stalker. The victim is an unknown young man whom she meets by chance and continues to shadow for the next six years. What begins innocently enough with a transient infatuation with the unknown stranger, later develops into an obsession; the woman drives for hours in order to monitor and register every thing that the apparently unsuspecting man does. 'Apparently', because all the while, events take place which question whether the man is aware of her presence.

The story is confided to the host and the public; the woman tells how she meticulously collected and registered the stranger´s rubbish, filmed him and commented on her own actions on mini cassette tapes. She was conscious that she might be approaching a psychological borderline and she expressed a fear that she "may be losing perspective." At the same time, there is a strong element of control in this nonphysical, non-confrontational behavior in which everything is minutely written down and documented. The viewer is gradually suspended in the stalker's fantasy, which is uncertain, and at the same time control driven. After six years the woman stops her activities, but not without difficulty. The state of being a stalker has become the norm and a goal of this “relationship” in itself.

The narrative and all the material are based on actual events, although the staging of a Late Night Show is fictitious and the stalker is played by an actress who is interviewed by an authentic host, Martin Krasnik. With the unbelievable plot of the story and the ostensible authenticity of the staging, the viewer again and again is brought to doubt what is real and what is fiction.

Apart from being a narrative about a love story gone awry, Late Night Show is also a narrative about a society of spectators, where we stage and are staged. In a society where media fills more and more, we let our innermost secrets unfold on the open screen. Finally, in this project, the classic roles of art history are reversed, as it is the woman's eye that beholds and the man who is made into an object.

[FACTS]

Nin Brudermann [more info]
Late Night Show,
ME Contemporary

Opening 16 April 2010
kl. 17-20

Final day of the show 15 May 2010

Nin Brudermann was born in Austria in 1970. She lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y., USA.

M.A., University Vienna and Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria.