Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff's TV Bar film 'Paradise' explores labor, narrative control, and real estate displacement
From 2020 to 2022, Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff's TV Bar in Berlin served as both a public space and the backdrop for their series 'Paradise.' This 81-minute film, shot on 16mm, comprises four episodes created during that same period, set in a fictional bar in 2023. It depicts bartenders reading increasingly bizarre scripts from a teleprompter under the supervision of a detached boss, delving into themes of labor and narrative control. Although the artists aimed to hand over the bar to its employees, the owner's choice to sell the property disrupted these plans. The series concludes with a hint that an insurance agency will take the bar's place. Henkel (born 1988) and Pitegoff (born 1987) have been collaborators for over ten years.
Key facts
- Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff ran TV Bar in Berlin from 2020 to 2022 as both a public bar and film set
- Their episodic series 'Paradise' was shot on 16mm film with a total runtime of 81 minutes 42 seconds
- The narrative is set in 2023 and follows bartenders forced to read teleprompter texts to customers
- The building owner's plan to replace TV Bar with an insurance agency became the series' ending
- The work features non-professional actors including friends and employees of TV Bar
- Previously shown silently in bars, the projected version includes a soundtrack by M.K. Frøslev
- Henkel and Pitegoff have collaborated for over a decade on venue-based artistic projects
- The artists currently run New Theater in Los Angeles after previous projects in Berlin
Entities
Artists
- Calla Henkel
- Max Pitegoff
- M. K. Frøslev
Institutions
- TV Bar
- New Theater
- Volksbühne
- Grüner Salon
- Isabella Bortolozzi
Locations
- Berlin
- Germany
- Berlin-Kreuzberg
- Berlin-Schöneberg
- Potsdamer Strasse
- Los Angeles
- United States