On striking up a friendship with the owner and the manager of a gun shop in Skowhegan, Maine, and being taken to a firing range, the artist asks them to read aloud excerpts from the work “The Concept of the Political” by Carl Schmitt, a controversial jurist known for his ties with the Nazi regime. As the protagonists read and reread the historical German text on violence, power, the role of friend/enemy, the viewer becomes aware of the potential conceptual and political pitfalls created by Schmitt’s ideas, which reverberate widely in present times.

Awards