We welcome Klaus W. Eisenlohr who will present a selection from his ongoing Urban Research film and video screening project curated for Directors Lounge in Berlin.
With the increased dynamic of urban development, more artists are concerned with urban space as a theme and issue. This selection shows a range of new short experimental and documentary work by international artists.
A Promessa Noëelle Georg (4:15, 2004, Portugal)
There's Nothing There Katerina Seda (14:00, 2003, CZ)
Detroit Park Julie Murray (8:00, 2005, USA)
If You Lived Here You Would Be Home By Now Diane Bonder (15:00, 2001, USA)
in 'na City Papa 'n Razzi aka Kemmy Thyssen (7:33, 2005, Germany)
Stadtrandzone Mitte in Langenhagen (excerpt) Klaus W. Eisenlohr (4:30, Germany)
SAVE Roger Warren Beebe (5:00, 2005, USA)
Night Walk Fabienne Gautier (7:00, 2006, France)
The Corridor Virginie Laganière (2:26, 2005, Canada)
On A Slow Boat to China Sonja Lillebaeck Christensen (18:00, 2005, Denmark)
Framefunk Dirk Holzberg and Jörg Pfeiffer (3:25, 2001, Germany)
A Promessa
Noëelle Georg
4:15, 2004, Portugal
"Oh no, my parents arrived - we need to move - ... - we made it!" The promise of a future and a new life in the old modernist residencies, the artist depicts a possible beautification!
There's Nothing There
Katerina Seda (14:00, 2003, Czech Republic)
Ponetovice. A village close to Brno in Czech Republic. No post office, no school. One Saturday in May 2003, everybody in town is doing what they usually do on Saturdays, just they do it at the same time. This game set up by Katerina Seda is designed like a real life video game, only it is a win-win situation: The synchronism of the ordinary makes everything special, the "Daily regime" becomes the script for a film out of the ordinary. The resulting film gives a multitude of ideas on the problems and chances of being on the verge between rural and urban life.
Detroit Park
Julie Murray (8:00, 2005, USA)
"Michigan Theatre was an elaborately decorated theater at the heart of a busy and vibrant downtown Detroit in the 1920s. The advent of television in the 1950s saw a significant drop in public performance attendance and it was finally closed in 1967. Sometime in the 1970s it was converted into a parking lot, where floors and ramps were installed with only the most necessary intrusion upon the old interior. The great carapace of elaborately molded plaster ceiling still hangs from a network of trusses attached to the roof and even the great stage curtains remained hanging, though these have since rotted away, looking more like a ragged cutty sark than the rich red drapery they began as. This video is an attempt to cast a number of speculative lines to imagined ghosts of its past while showing a picture of its present."
Julie Murray
If You Lived Here You Would Be Home By Now
Diane Bonder
15:00, 2001, USA
If You Lived Here, You'd be Home by Now is about the divisiveness over land, the relationship of public and private space in small town America, and the concept of home. Using documentary strategies, landscape stills are juxtaposed to stories "ripped from headlines" of a small-town newspaper. The struggle over public space described in the stories, reflect universal concepts of space, privacy and property ownership
in 'na City
Papa 'n Razzi aka Kemmy Thyssen
7:33, 2005, Germany
in 'na City seeks harmony and connectivity between images and music. A collage of images from the City of Hannover - skyscrapers, traffic, the surface of the city and its mesh - creates a new vision. Images and colours complement musical sounds and rhythms. Everyday space and vernacular modern architecture are the matrix of the pulsing music.
Music by Systetic, now named: i n d i z
Stadtrandzone Mitte in Langenhagen (excerpt)
Klaus W. Eisenlohr
4:30, 2005, Germany
In a changed urban environment, in the city-in-between, in the urbanized zones, the possible narratives have already changed. Occurrences, happenings and interaction are key for the transformation of a transitory space to human space. In this excerpt of Stadtrandzone Mitte, a group of youngsters from Hannover show in a couple of scenes, how they interact in public space. The scenes were guided, photographed and edited by Klaus W. Eisenlohr.
SAVE
Roger Warren Beebe
5:00, 2005, USA
A disused gas station offers a curious imperative to passers-by: SAVE. A riddle posed in the form of architecture: what is there to save? Another instalment in the history of Americans pointing their cameras at gas stations; an attempt to figure out something about where we've been, where we're headed, and what's been left behind.
Night Walk
Fabienne Gautier
7:00, 2006, France
An improvised walk through Paris at night
"Slices of light graffito Paris at night: the tracery of the city's nocturnal bioluminescence." (antimatter)
The Corridor
Virginie Laganière
2:26, 2005, Canada
A corridor, a passageway between offices, becomes the internal and visible projection of the outside city. Dream, hope or hallucination? Virginie Laganière, with very dry humor, shows imaginary metamorphosis of the daily urban environment.
On A Slow Boat to China
Sonja Lillebaeck Christensen
18:00, Denmark, 2005
Single men on the waterfront is not an urban phenomenon but solitairy men are. The filmmaker tells us how she watches them. Her camera does not watch objectively, she peers, glances, stares, as she creates empathetic but also ironic stories for them. Sonja Lillebaek Christensen surprises us with her freshness while avoiding any rules or genres. And she tells us something about urban live in very simple ways, maybe because she does not really feel part of it herself.
Framefunk
Dirk Holzberg and Jörg Pfeiffer
3:25, Germany 2001
audio by Mouse on Mars
For an hour a tram is transformed into an audio/visual laboratory by a group of artists, accompanied by the electronic band Mouse on Mars who play live on as it travels through the centre of Cologne. Live cameras capture the inner and outer environment of the tram, the video images are edited in real-time and then projected back onto the passing urban landscape.The resulting image stream is in turn filmed again, mixing the inner and outer space further. The architecture of Cologne becomes an integral part of both the construction and the projection of the acoustic and visual timeframe.