The starting point of SZENARIO (SCENARIO) was, for me, the Altmark military training area in Saxony-Anhalt, which I visited for the first time in 2015. On these massive grounds, layers of military past and present overlap. In the earth, there are still German and Soviet bombs, grenades, and munitions from the eras of National Socialism and the Soviet occupation. There are ruins of bunkers and decaying barracks. At the same time, this is the site of the most modern military model city in Europe and the German army’s combat training centre. Soldiers here do daily drills simulating current or possible future warlike conflicts. For one year, we observed everyday life at the Altmark military training area with a camera. SZENARIO does not try to make a statement or construct a story. The film is made up of fragments. Each scene stands for itself. I was interested in how the people’s language would shed light on Germany’s relationship to war. The dictionary defines ‘scenario’ as a model of a sequence of possible events or a draft structured in scenes for a film or a simulation. SZENARIO was shot during a period of upheaval. Harun Farocki’s ‘Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges’ (Images of the World and Inscriptions of War) states: ‘War is always there, among us.’
Marie Wilke
