Songs from the Second Floor

A man stands in a subway car, his face dirty with soot. In his right hand he carries a plastic bag with documents, or rather, the charred remains of them. In a corridor, a man desperately clings to the legs of his boss, who has just fired him. In a café, a young man waits for his father, who has just torched his furniture company for the insurance money. Meanwhile, traffic jams and self-flagellating stockbrokers block the streets, while an economist stares into a crystal ball to find a solution to rising labour costs. Everything and everyone is on their way somewhere, but the destination and its meaning have long since been lost.
Forty-six independent ‘images’ are loosely held together by a narrative that connects the protagonists. But these protagonists seem to have become the living dead, ashen-faced, sick, barely able to move, let alone break out. ‘Songs from the Second Floor’ raises questions about the state of modern Western society. It asks what holds this society together, what sustains it, about the absence of meaningful images, values and ideals.