Realities

Our project is supposed to show the dual nature of ‘reality’. There is, on the one hand, a reality which could be described as obvious, self-evident, easily perceptible and superficial; and on the other hand, what may be called a ‘real reality’. By this we mean a reality which may be perceived only through a shocking confrontation with unpleasant events that disturbs the subject's original point of view on “superficial reality, which then triggers an intentional, active reflexive process aiming to grasp the hidden events, facts or processes that lie below the surface of ‘superficial’ reality.
The story is about an ordinary office worker who does not particularly like his job, but who goes out at night in order to forget about the dull reality. In the afternoon, he is asked to perform a task that compels him to take the lift. However, the lift goes wrong takes him to the basement, where he finds a door ajar. This door leads to a sort of factory-room he heard about but never saw. In order to open the door, the reader has to click on a link which plays a video made of pictures related to the horrors of the 20th and 21th centuries (concentration camps, Guantanamo prison, environmental pollution, workers’ hard conditions...) which is supposed to represent the traumatic reality of modern ‘real’ reality. After this horrific vision, the character begins to perceive reality differently. The reader is incited to perceive it too.

The main instrument for the realisation of our idea is the narrative text . There is protagonist who is living in the “superficial reality”. He is an ordinary employee in a production company. The story is not supposed to be 'realistic' (in the common sense of the word): the company is composed of offices on the upper floors, and of a factory in the basement, which normally is not the case. It should rather be seen as an allegory of the structure of today's society. The character is an example of a person who just does his work, enjoys life and does not think much. In the afternoon, his manager, called 'X', gives him a task which forces him to go to another floor of his company's high building, and because of a technical problem with the lift, the protagonist comes down from the 13th floor where he usually works to the basement where he finds a door ajar leading to the commodity production department. Something leads him to open the door and he sees behind it the real horrible working conditions of commodity production workers and also another part of reality, the existence of which he could not even suspect. This confrontation changes him and he is not anymore able to live his life like he did it before.