The various narrative threads are shown as projections and on fl atscreens installed diagonally within the space. The depicted sequences differ strongly in terms of form and atmosphere. On one wall, two large video projections depict a hospital surveillance system. Black-and-white footage, switching between views of different hospital rooms with elevated camera positions reveal the routines and the emergency care in the hospital where the child is found. On the opposite wall, the young woman is seen wandering through the streets of Berlin in the early morning, evoking a melancholic lethargy which is also reflected in a multi-channel sound score containing the sounds of the city occasionally overtaken by the resonance of the hospital. The calm narrative fl ow consisting of video and interspersed still images moves right to left across the wall. The camera accompanies the protagonist at eye-level as she makes her way to the baby hatch, and afterwards as she heads off into an uncertain future.
This aspect of someone passing through a space, as well as the method of spreading the visual information across several large projection screens, is already featured in earlier works by Ann-Sofi Sidén such as “3 MPH (Horse to Rocket)” (2003), which describes the artist’s slow journey on horseback through Texas, overcoming historical, social and technological hurdles and obstacles along the way. In the video installation “In Passing”, the space traversed by the young woman becomes a strong reflection of herself. The places shown here refer to a topography and hence to a personal biography on the periphery of society. At the same time, the “tristesse” of many of these places and the passers-by suggest the distress of someone in a situation of extreme crisis. This atmosphere is subtly evoked: the woman’s inner turmoil is represented by images of external features rather than by a direct display of emotional outbursts.
In terms of its form and content, this work combines a number of approaches used by Ann-Sofi Sidén in her earlier works, which often focus on people in psychological or social borderline situations. As in “Who Told the Chambermaid?” (1998), she alternates between ‘stagedness’ and documentary style, using narrative forms that leave the viewer uncertain as to the source of the images. The viewer becomes a putative accomplice, a voyeur, whether watching the inner workings of a hotel or the backside of a hospital, where a baby is being disposed of (as in the new work, “In Passing”). Here, as in the multichannel video installation “Warte Mal!” (Hey wait!, 1999), which portrayed prostitutes working in the border area between Germany and the Czech Republic, the viewer has to move through the installation in order to comprehend the fragmented whole in its kaleidoscopic presentation, thereby playing a substantial role in the (re)construction of the narrative. Seen against this background, it is almost as if one of the young women from “Warte Mal!” has stepped out, so that she and her fate can become the focus of “In Passing”.
