The mist of the Niagara Falls in North America is endowed with a particular sujet, when for a moment it conveys the Iroquois virgin Lelwala’s likeness. The legend MAID OF THE MIST recounts her flight from an impending forced marriage in a canoe via the Niagara Falls – leaping to her death. From time to time one might still glimpse her spirit in the thick spray mist of the falls. A legend which allegedly originates from the Iroquois, when in fact it was made up by white settlers in the middle of the 19th century. The legend essentially ignores the reality of the indigenous tribes’ lives, where the tradition of forced marriage never existed. As the legend also was augmented with diverse sexual innuendos, the “sexy suicidal squaw” formed a reoccuring figure in the white American imagination of the 19th century as portrayed in various plays and narratives, writes Ginger Strand (2008). Here the magnificent natural spectacle is bestowed with the attribute of a movie screen, similar to IMAX cinemas. Seemingly the water surface begins revealing stories to its observers. And yet, it remains completely silent. The mist, however, not only serves here as image carrier but becomes anthromorphic and thereby manifests a distinct anthropocentrism. This line between the open river and the opaque “other world”, the riverside, describes a projection surface not only for Western fascination, but also for Western anxiety. In both cases the surface proves problematic for its repressive ascriptions. Human features are imposed on the wilderness while its human inhabitants are deprived of their humanity: “all of them were so little more than voices – and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, im- palpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense”, states Marlow, the protagonist of Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS. Mean voices surround him and simultaneously move into the center of his imaginary universe. By virtue of the narrativity the topos of the riverside transforms into scenography and ultimately into the setting for annexing protagonists.
Kamera: Jakob Engel / Sound design: Jakob Engel, Philipp Mayer von Rouden / Schnitt: Jakob Engel