"The Ironing Maid" shows a woman in her daily tasks, in a Europe that is in war. The background shows abstracted images of the war in Ukraine, while the woman continues. Doesn’t she understand the seriousness of what happens behind her? Or is she obliged to concentrate on her own day-to-day survival? The stock market listings, on the bottom of the screen, don’t show any concern.
A Ukrainian native Russian speaker reads, in Russian, fragments of ‘Il Principe’, the manual that Niccolò Machiavelli wrote in 1513 for suppressing and manipulating the population and manage the army and groups of mercenaries: a series of tips and tricks that are still valid today.
The music, a composition with the same name as the video, that lasts one hour, was a dedicated composition by the artist (Guido Janssens) for this video.
The video is projected on a wall at 160 x 90 cm, in order to have the woman at natural size.
The tickerband with the stock market listings can be called from a server in real time, if there is a stable internet connexion. This accentuates the pertinence of the whole installation: this is happening now.
This installation exists with French and English subtitles. Both can for instance be shown the one after the other (in a loop). On the pictures we see parts of the English version. On the video link you can see the French version.
