Who is Steve?

Steve – the main character of the animated short Montenegro (2013, Luiz Stockler) – is a twenty-seven year old boy, who could easily be the neighbour whose name you always forget. Sometimes you meet him in the nearby bar or shop, and sometimes in the elevator of the apartment building, where you actually exchange a word or two out of sheer courtesy. But, the moment you arrive to your floor, you forget about Steve. Steve is nothing special. Like most people in this world, history will overlook Steve and rather deal with that select few with spectacular life stories who were put on the pedestal for one reason or other. At the thought of this, Steve simply shrugs and reminds himself that a spectacle is a lack of art.

Steve isn’t the kind of person to draw attention to himself, or one to cause behind-the-back whispers and mocking. He is quite invisible. He once probably had a girlfriend, who might have left him recently with some cliché explanation. Perhaps she needed time for herself or something like that. It probably didn’t hurt him too much, or surprise him much either.

Despite the fact that Steve has a birthday today, said day is no different than all the other three hundred and sixty-four. Like every year, most of his friends rejected his invitation for the party this year. The first in the morning to congratulate him by phone was probably his mother, and he was also surprised by a card from his high school friend, who sent it from the trip in Montenegro with birthday greetings.

Steve, despite the fact that he is only an animated character, is not spared by the small daily concerns that are roaming the minds of ordinary mortals. Each morning, he strains with the meaning of his strange dreams, and sometimes, after an in-depth exploration of internet sites, he finds to have all the symptoms of one dangerous disease or another. Sometimes he lies out of politeness and, like all of us, he also wonders why Zinedine Zidane head-butted that man.

Steve is definitely not a person to draw crowds. But if we manage to get close to him anyway, really close, we will find out that in that exact non-exciting life of this small, unimportant being, hides the potential for the development into eternity. Or as Paul Virilio once beautifully wrote: »The infinitely small is more extensive than infinitely large«.

 

 

Kristina Kokalj

Translation: Sanja Struna