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The main building of the TV Broadcasting Station Stellar in "Ginger and Fred" by F. Fellini, the workers' housing estates in Pier Pablo Pasolinis "Mamma Roma", Rosellini's "Roma, cittá aperta", Italian Neo-realism film. Architecture (through the Cinecittá film ) in Rome which, owing to various story lines, becomes film architecture.
Ralf Hoedt and Moira Zoitl examine the medial representation of architecture and city planning in their co-operation. The exhibition case study: cittá aperta showed an interim report by means of medial materials. Set-photographs of the produced video "magliana" and of diverse architecture found in films quoted in the exhibition; Reproduced photographs from architectural guides and tapes, film posters, and videos to convey the status of the search.
Ralf Hoedt and Moira Zoitl use the exhibition title to describe the fraying of modern cities. "The city is not clearly delimitated any more. Town development does not take place in the historical center, but at the boundaries, the periphery. There, new industry and housing developments continue to spread. The slogan of the 50's and 60's of a motorcar city are reality. " Cosima Reiner in "magazine" (annual report of the Salzburg Art Association, 1998) about the exhibition case study: cittá aperta, in the Salzburg Ring Gallery.
Faithful to this reality, the video "magliana" pursues an actress, who drives on the motorway along an industrial quarter, Magliana. The view from the window shows that Walter Gropius? demands of the 20?s have become reality: according to these, the perception that architecture offers is to change according to the speed of the automobile. Thus not details, but simple forms; not a district for taking a walk, it is best suited, however, to drives in a large car with an automatic transmission, CD player and beverage holder, driving with screeching tires into the next scene. "magliana" does not fulfill these functional requirements for urban (film) Architecture.
The woman speaks about her feelings while driving a car. Driving, to be mobile, to get from point A to point B - as meditative possibility of functional assistance of everyday life. It appears to her, as if nothing else remains, a strange euphoric feeling arises while driving. With almost no cinematic tips, the levels of reality change: the woman now sits observing herself in the center of a lawn in front of the impressive Esso administration building of the 60's: "My individual physical self is faded out, covered by windowpanes and metal." part of the architecture?
"The woman hardly sees cars with differentiated shapes, invents imaginary people, who move forward in a queue." Location of this scene, the Uffici della Esso by Julio Lafuente: three slots placed beside another, next to the motorway. In the video the woman changes to another medium: a voice on the tape speaks of voices recorded without a microphone, which can be edited with unbelievable clarity in empty spaces . Following a text passage spoke by an Italian actor about the architectural meaning of the building as a plug in town center, a text from the film Ginger and Fred spoken by the same actor and in the same intonation. Here the building becomes the transmission building of a television company.
Interchanging levels: architecture interacts with the viewer, the viewer interacts with the architecture, architecture acts in film, film interacts with architecture... the apparently sober drive around the discussed building in the video becomes a surreal experience of urban architecture. Mora Zoitl shows a fraying of perception in the scene cittá aperta.
Opening the edges of the city within city planning and also arbitrarily recharging the representation levels within this magical perception. Selections taken from tracks of Richard D. James? album Aphex Twin support the magical-surreal components of this conceptual work. In the exhibition large black-and-whiite photographs of the set byactress Elisabetta Valgoi function as proofs of the cinematic activity within the indistinct experience of an absurd interaction. (Suess) |
