Small Talk

Chiara Montanari asked two people who had never met to talk only about the weather. They managed fourteen minutes before one of them laughed and the other changed the subject.

The film is shown on two screens facing each other, one coral and one pale blue, so visitors stand in the middle of the conversation. You turn your head from one to the other, the way you would in a real room.

Neither speaker is an actor. Montanari found them through an advert asking for people who were bad at small talk.

The bench between the screens is part of the work. It is the exact width of a bus stop bench in Bologna.