“As if God forgot to come ‘round here to pave the roads.”
After watching The Edge of The City, a film by artist Stefan Demming this particular sentence, said by one of the gang members caught on camera, sticks in my mind. Both documentary and fiction, Demming’s film investigates the limitations of urban space and human endeavour at the margins of visibility.
A charismatic narrator guides us to the different edges of the world’s biggest Metropolis, Mexico City. He draws us into the two protagonists’ mission; the relentless search for mental and factual borders, so that we become witnesses of random encounters and unexpected adventures along the fine line between the last signs of human inhabitation and the desert. The camera focuses on the forgotten and neglected by urban politics and on the daily struggle of a population usually hidden from media representation, on youth gangs and ‘heroes’ in criminal scenarios.
The film’s narrative is ambivalent and at the same time both humorous but troubling. We can never be sure about it’s intention, leaving us suspending belief somewhere between amusement and disturbance. In their encounter with different cultures and ways of living the two European anti-heroes are humanitarian friend and distanced observer acting beyond our expected mode of representation familiar in documentaries. By exaggerating and persistently imposing their western perspective onto what they discover they can clearly pinpoint ordinarily neglected and ignored issues of injustice. Their naïve, clown-like behaviour paradoxically encourages trust and confessions from the people they meet, dismantling inconsistencies making them partners in kidnap and crime activities.
The dwellers that they meet during their travel through the lines of urban confinement seem to have found a specific way of inhabiting the contested reality of their modest territories. With menace the film persistently circles around one main issue: Who will win within this uneven battle between civilisation and an inhuman environment? Will the city finally give in and allow nature to regain territory and ease where there is nothing but poverty, crime, injustice, violence, dirt and heat?
After watching The Edge of The City, a film by artist Stefan Demming this particular sentence, said by one of the gang members caught on camera, sticks in my mind. Both documentary and fiction, Demming’s film investigates the limitations of urban space and human endeavour at the margins of visibility.
A charismatic narrator guides us to the different edges of the world’s biggest Metropolis, Mexico City. He draws us into the two protagonists’ mission; the relentless search for mental and factual borders, so that we become witnesses of random encounters and unexpected adventures along the fine line between the last signs of human inhabitation and the desert. The camera focuses on the forgotten and neglected by urban politics and on the daily struggle of a population usually hidden from media representation, on youth gangs and ‘heroes’ in criminal scenarios.
The film’s narrative is ambivalent and at the same time both humorous but troubling. We can never be sure about it’s intention, leaving us suspending belief somewhere between amusement and disturbance. In their encounter with different cultures and ways of living the two European anti-heroes are humanitarian friend and distanced observer acting beyond our expected mode of representation familiar in documentaries. By exaggerating and persistently imposing their western perspective onto what they discover they can clearly pinpoint ordinarily neglected and ignored issues of injustice. Their naïve, clown-like behaviour paradoxically encourages trust and confessions from the people they meet, dismantling inconsistencies making them partners in kidnap and crime activities.
The dwellers that they meet during their travel through the lines of urban confinement seem to have found a specific way of inhabiting the contested reality of their modest territories. With menace the film persistently circles around one main issue: Who will win within this uneven battle between civilisation and an inhuman environment? Will the city finally give in and allow nature to regain territory and ease where there is nothing but poverty, crime, injustice, violence, dirt and heat?
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