Pregnancy, birthing and parental care are strongly charged social roles. The partly absurd public discourse about them – reinforced by hyper-positive media images and stereotypes – makes natural concerns feel less and less natural. Evolutionary necessities have been turned into ciphers whose collective emotional over-forming leaves next to no space for personal experience. In this phase of life, self-awareness and external perception often diverge substantially. There is usually little room, neither for fears and doubts nor for any other emotion, outside the generally prescribed bliss. Prenatal stages of development seem pre-defined, standardised, tried and tested. Little can be done “right”, much “wrong”. Every decision for or against a pre-natal optimisation measure counts. Nothing is left to chance.
But what if chance strikes anyway? When the ultrasound diagnosis yields a painful result? How does obstetrics, obsessed with detail, handle deviations from “the plan”, how does it deal with the fact that statistically one in six pregnancies ends in miscarriage? Filmmaker and editor Irem Schwarz’s found footage collage is a haunting combination of terribly omnipresent cliché imagery that addresses these relevant questions in a voice that is more than just her own.

A brief historical summary to begin with: The Lagos International Trade Fair centre was built in the mid-1970s, intended to serve as a marketplace for the non-aligned states. Archival footage and inserts alternate abruptly. While the news images of the time are rather propagandistic in tone, the inserts supply the sober facts.

Some fifty years later, vast tracts of the exhibition halls are under water – an ideal place for ferns and other humidity-loving plants. The initially static camera begins to move. Young craftsmen have converted one tract of the giant complex into workshops: they hammer, carpenter, repair bicycles, prepare meals. There is also a lot of activity outside the rambling site with its artificial lake; people are still trading; everyone is busy with something. A woman’s voice remembers bygone days while two young men ride a bicycle through an empty exhibition hall. A building may have lost its original purpose, but new and independent life has moved in. An open, trans-historic space in the making.