The picture material consisting of montages of trimmed stills from the film ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ (Dir.: Norman Jewison, USA, 1968, starring: Faye Dunaway & Steve McQueen) formulates a subjective interpretation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ (USA, 1965).
Director Norman Jewison used the split screen systematically, dividing the screen into several images so that the audience could see incidents that were happening in different places at the same time.
Susanne Weirich uses this film montage technique in her work BUSYBODY. She selects fragments of images from Jewison’s film and rearranges them into six tableaux. Each of these tableaux breaks down into six segments, which are themselves repeated fragments of: a women’s eyes, a man’s hand holding a fountain pen, a women’s hand on her naked shoulder.
Weirich provides each of these six tableaux with a quotation of Pynchon’s novel inserted into the pictorial fragments as yellow subtitles.
The encounter between these two works that to equal degree both deal with persecution and the delirious quest for meaning generate a puzzle that remains unresolved. How much room does a gesture need? What happens in the space between? Both detectives (Dunaway/ Maas) play off the joy of discovery against the art of failure. ‘I am only being a busybody’, claims Oedipa Maas towards the end of the novel.

busy. body n (derog.) person who interferes in other people's affairs.
- a mischief maker (Unruhestifter)
- a mirror set at the side of a building to reflect a view of the street (Spion/Fensterspiegel)
(Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary)


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