2023-10-09 00:00:36
Von Conny Lee
In “Minihorror” we accompany the main characters Mini and Miki through various episodes in which unpleasant and terrible things happen to them. For example, Miki meets an old friend who he actually thought had died. For the rest of the day, Miki doubts whether he is actually still alive or already dead. Or: Mini and Miki’s apartment is taken over by mold and insects, so they have to look for a new one.
“Two power cables lead into an internally lit, orange tent in the middle of the living room. Miki and Mini are sitting inside and searching through the real estate portals. They try to make empty, overpriced apartments with crooked roofs or soulless shared gardens livable, at least in their imagination. While they click on sad prime locations and nightmare views, indefinite one-room prisons, sunny shit apartments with a view of neurotic courtyards and generous billion-euro pleasures until their brains hurt, finger-long worms crawl across the parquet floor.
In her new book, Barbi Marković examines the horror of everyday life. It exaggerates, exaggerates and leads to absurdity. Minihorror is funny and a recommendation not only for fans of the horror genre or funny paperbacks.
Apollonia Theresa Bitzan
FM4: What is horror for you, and how does horror arise for you in the book?
Barbi Marković: Ugh, a difficult question (laughs). So I understood horror as a genre as a kind of exercise in fear, because in horror as an art form, i.e. as a film, literature and so on, nothing can happen to you as a viewer, and it focuses your attention in a beautiful way. It allows you to address some real problems in life and society and exaggerate them, so that in the end you’re talking about what’s normal and real, but you’re also pretty creeped out by it.
Residenzverlag
“Minihorror” was published by Residenz Verlag.
FM4: Why this episodic form in which the stories don’t connect at all? For example, in one episode Mini and Miki break up and in the next they are back together.
Barbi Marković: Besides the fact that it is a horror book, it is also a kind of funny paperback. Miki and Mini are the main characters. And just like in the funny paperbacks Mickey and Minnie always get out of their ordinary lives and into the next adventure without it always matching up, that’s the same with me.
FM4: Why these two Disney mice as the main characters?
Barbi Marković: It took me something to connect these stories and make them funny. I didn’t want to just spout a pale horror, and for me it immediately took on color as soon as I thought of that. There is a quote from Disney where he said about Mickey Mouse that he is a little guy who is constantly trying to do everything well. I wanted to have characters like that: characters who actually only want the best and strive for it. The second thing was that these mice provide the possibility of identification for everyone.
FM4: How much Barbi is in Mini?
Barbi Marković: Or in Miki? I’m in everything. I only have my brain at my disposal, and most of the things I know about the world come from my experience. That means I’m in there a lot, but not everywhere. There are other people in there too. Sometimes I just know something or heard it somewhere and that’s what comes in. In that sense it’s a mix, and you can’t be sure what’s in this mini and what’s not.
FM4: As in “The Shitty Time,” there is also a role-playing game at the back of the book. With “The Shitty Time” you did a round of role-playing games and a lot of material for the stories emerged from that. Was it like that again this time?
Residence Publishing House
The bonus material includes, among other things, “105 more possible horrors with Mini and Miki”
Barbi Marković: This time that and the story of Mercedes Kornberger and the little horrors in the appendix are all bonus material, just like in a funny paperback. If you don’t really want to read, you can just look at these things (laughs). I just thought these things actually fit in quite well. And Thomas’ game (Brandstetter, note) goes well with the story “Small Ax” about the party.
FM4: You said in an interview that optimism is almost life-threatening and that your strategy is to think about the bad, then life will be better. Transferred to the new book: Do you also expect mini-horror everywhere in your everyday life?
Barbi Marković: Maybe I experience the world a little bit like that. Things often scare me. It may not be as bad as in the book, the atmosphere in my head, but it can often be that the little things are big in my brain, in hindsight, after they have happened.
FM4: What is the worst everyday horror for you? A setting that scares you most in everyday life, like being at a party and making small talk, that’s this horror.
Barbi Marković: Having to work in the call center. So in German. I had to do it. When I first came to Vienna and my German was much worse, they simply handed me a cell phone and told me to call people and I didn’t know exactly how to speak on the phone. I had no practice, it was just humiliation. That was a horror.
“Minihorror” von Barbi Marković im Theater am WerkUraufführung am 8. Oktober 2023, Regie: Aslı Kışlal
FM4: The play “Mini Horror” premiered on Sunday. At what point did the idea for this come about?
Barbi Marković: I had just finished the text and just wrote Aslı Kışlal (the director, note) met. And like most cool things in my life, it was just a coincidence. She urgently needed a text, I sent her a version and we agreed. So it happened that the piece came out before the book.
FM4: How are the people who read your book supposed to leave reading it? What do you give them with the horror experience?
Barbi Marković: So my feeling is that I’m not giving them as much of a horror experience as I originally wanted. My personal feeling is, and now I’ll quote Miki from a story in the book, “Hihihihihi.” I think that’s what people might come away with.
FM4: Do you have a favorite episode?
Barbi Marković: It always changes, but right now I’m loving The Beast. This is the story in which Mini is interviewed by a journalist. I think I wrote that after an interview and I was extremely happy about this Hannibal Lecter mini.
“Closer,” says Mini.
The journalist takes a step closer, with an uneasy feeling.
“Closer,” says Mini again.
The journalist stretches her hand as far as she can, but she doesn’t take another step.
“I’m nearsighted,” says Mini, “come closer. That’s good.” When the journalist holds her ID card almost up to her nose, Mini smiles: “Freelancer, oh right. It’s good that you’re married.”
The journalist pulls her ring hand away and suppresses her anger, then tries to take a little control.
FM4: I read the scene with our interview in mind and thought to myself, phew, okay…
Barbi Marković laughs.
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