The Cage
HD video, 4 min 55 s, 2013, preview of the two-channel installation
A dramatized story from Story Café
The video is dealing with a memory of a horrible childhood experience. A woman tells about an bullying incident from her childhood that she has not forgiven. The woman meets her bully when she is adult but does not want to see that the other has changed. The story is told in backlashes. The story is inspired by a story that a visitor has told in Johanna Lecklin’s Story Café in Helsinki 2006.
The piece is a two channel installation and it is also edited to short film version.
Synopsis
A schoolgirl, Sofia, is invited to another girl’s birthday party. Instead of taking her to a party, the birthday girl, Rebecca, leads Sofia to a coppice with a cage made of wood and a bunch of boys standing around it. Rebecca pushes Sofia into the cage. All the children start to tease Sofia and call her with bad names. Bigger boys come by with their bicycles. They wonder why Sofia is in the cage but they don’t intervene. Instead they circle around the cage with their bikes and then leave the grove. The adult Sofia and Rebecca meet in a bar twenty years after the event. Sofia is still full of hatred against her former bully. The roles have changed; Sofa seems self -confident and Rebecca looks like she would like them to settle. They do not reconcile.