Hansjörg Schertenleib

Protestors have been arrested during an altercation with the police. Now they find themselves standing against a cell wall, barefoot and intimidated with their legs spread. The man, a doctor from Heidelberg, is confused. An authoritarian interrogator grills him. The young man and the girl talk in the cell. One of the police at the demo took a few hits. But, much more than the physical injuries, he is suffering from the separation from his wife and daughter who have left him. His colleagues’ indifference and mockery are signs of the inhumane, cynical atmosphere of this police station. When the adolescent daughter of the policeman finally shows up at the station as a prisoner and flirts with the unscrupulous officer, the outsider is close to despair.
This drastic depiction of the psychological power rituals that the police relish in, setting themselves against everything that seems inferior – so against their suffering colleagues, too – is effectively contrasted with a lyrical level. Each of the characters, when alone, speaks their truth. “Outside of place and time” is a nameless woman, perhaps the wife of the abandoned policeman, whose ‘song’ interrupts the events at the police station and transcends it. It is a momento mori, a retrospective view of love, a transgression of nature, in expectation of the others who sooner or later must also go there: to Ultima Thule.