The Average is a short film that with a surreal narrative takes on the notion about how the increasing measurability in our society forms us. In a time when our own fire should be greatest – where we constantly compare ourselves to each other – are we all still part of the same mean value?

The Average wants to use the mean value as a way of talking about human existence. What happens when everybody wants to stand out from the crowd? What is the total sum of our unique value? In the film you follow the association threads of the average in different chapters with visual nodes in the form of Dali’s melting bells, a centipede that breaks in two and an Ikaros who no longer wants to burn.

With the film Smeds creates a new mythology and language of symbols to embody the tale of the average. In previous works she has touched on the individual’s marketability and the narrative of neoliberalism – the success story in distinguishing oneself from the mass and striving upwards. The underlying idea of what constitutes an average value is the basis of the project, but the story is more suggestive than political and rather approximates what is human’s bodily and existential mean value.

The film is the realization of an aesthetic vision in which surrealism, society, poetry and politics are interwoven. It has also been a way for Smeds to develop a new working method where the boundaries between script, props, sculpture and performance are loosened up and tied together.