The video opens with a shot of a crowd of people engrossed in the Saturday afternoon shopping ritual in Via del Corso in Rome.
Movement and noise begin to speed up before dissolving into a blurred whole with indistinct sounds. This is the background before which the second scene unfolds: a kind of parallel universe, of animals – a few monkeys, a giraffe, a tortoise – attending to their daily activities of feeding and grooming themselves, or of simply looking around.
The atmosphere is calm and pleasant. The crowd of shoppers is just a silent, abstract backdrop now but intrudes in a number of shots through annoying fragmented images and sound clips as a few till receipts flutter slowly to the ground.
A wise, unruffled tortoise walks slowly among the crumbled pieces of paper that are scattered on the ground. However, the peaceful mood is disturbed by the harsh sound of a car horn. The relentless coming and going of passing motor vehicles obliterates everything.

title: Passing By
technique: Experimental video
length: 7’39”
year: 2008
© Maria Korporal