S Division

Toronto 2012. Sotheby’s International Realty, a division of Sotheby’s Art Auction House, promotes a lakeside condo development using Impressionist-and-Surrealist-derived imagery. The ads on hoarding, billboards, and other media are often sexist and delve into the absurd: for instance, a ballet dancer doing a tour jeté underwater amongst a school of fish. And it becomes apparent the developers considered only young white childless couples as potential clients—no humans of any other type. “An unwelcome side effect of the Avant-garde’s success was its appropriation by the “art of advertising .” For the Avant-garde could no longer be distinguished from the Avant-garde of advertising.” Hans Belting The ads depict a lakeside paradise detached from the urban environment. The last sequence shows the flip side of the development: an adjacent wasteland with freight trains roaring past—and closest to the condos, an elevated expressway with cars streaming by non-stop. (Earlier in the film, cars appeared only as as phantom-like reflections crossing the high gloss surfaces of the ad hoardings.) “Clement Greenberg, in 1939, defined kitsch as imitating art without being art. Today, the reverse seems to be true when art (apparently) imitates kitsch in order to undermine (or to overcome) kitsch— a daring maneuver.” Hans Belting Peter’s camera work, editing, cropping, and sequencing look beyond the ads’ intended purpose. For instance, is the recumbent, glassy-eyed woman in the last shot (with accompanying text on the signage that shouts “Living”) glamorous—though she looks dead? Or is she both. The film’s music is a late piece by Franz Liszt: Unstern! Sinistre Disastro (1880).