Anri Sala's 'Long Sorrow' at Galerie Chantal Crousel

At Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, from April 23 to June 3, 2006, Anri Sala presented his film 'Long Sorrow' (Longue désolation), set in Berlin's Märkisches Viertel. The film opens with a view from an empty room through a window onto a blue sky, revealing a figure wearing a floral headdress—New York saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc, improvising while suspended outside a building. The building, nicknamed 'Lange Jammer' (Long Sorrow) by residents, is a long concrete housing block from 1960s urbanist utopias, contrasting with the colorful facades of the surrounding 'Papageiensiedlung' (parrot settlement). The gallery painted its walls the same gray as the building to echo the bitterness. Moondoc performs under lights on the top floor, but the mechanism keeping him aloft is never revealed. The film ends with the musician flying away, his floral headdress merging into gardens. Sala's work often addresses broken utopias, environmental awareness, and individual singularity, contrasting social order with free-jazz and unconventional framing. The exhibition also included eight photographs titled 'Passage à côté de l'heure,' where shifting angles of a mundane pipe create an imaginary clock face, and the video 'Window Drawing,' exploring light and off-screen space.