Back  Urban Research Program



A Place in the Story

fwd   Hui-Min Tsen
UK 17:04 DV 2005

A Place in the Story (or How to Get from My House to Being an Insider)
To create the soundtrack for A Place in the Story, I interviewed a dozen people across Chicago, asking them a series of questions ending with where within the city they feel they are insiders. As they spoke, I transcribed their stories and, at the end, had them read the transcription back to a recorder, along with directions on how to get to their location from my house. The result is a form of guided tour of an intangible Chicago. Their stories and directions provide a narrative voice-over while I quietly trace the route from my house to where they feel they are insiders.

"All places exist somewhere between the inside and outside views of them, the ways in which they compare, and contrast, with other places ... Finding a fitting place for oneself in the world is finding a fitting place for oneself in a story." -- Lucy Lippard, Lure of the Local

A Place in the Story

Programm:  fwd   E - Installation Loops



Abroad

fwd   Alli Savolainen
FIN 3:40 DV 2004

Already with the title, Alli Savolainen denies any placement of the film's images, although they seem not to be composed from different but only one city in Latin America. The shown cityscape is one of memories after having traveled. Rather showing "memoriable landmarks", Alli recreates a kind of passageway, reconstructing the memory of experienced architectural structure.

Abroad

Programm:  fwd   C - On the Road



Augenblick Nr.3, Nr.25, Nr.39

fwd   Telemach Wiesinger
DE 12:00 16mm 2006

Augenblicke, moments, which Telemach Wiesinger took in Lissabon (#3), Mexico-City (#25) and in Praha (#39), just show one detail from a travel to different cities. One shot, on tripod, for 3 minutes. He thus forces us to read the given details, the small things happening, and the spatial relations. Neither is he even trying to give an overview or a complete story, nor any pretension of a "understanding". Rather, he is forwarding his glimpse onto one vernacular scene to the viewer, as if he or her may better understand what is happening. And, there might be beauty.

Augenblick Nr.3

Programm:  fwd   C - On the Road



Berlin Warszawa Express

fwd   Caroline Koebel
USA 19:50 DV 2006,

In Berlin Warszawa Express a disappearance becomes a departure, but rather than attempting to reconstitute what is lost, the filmmaker follows the clues and signs framing the site and scene with an anticipatory gaze. She performs the kino eye, meeting the same train day after day, yet here the eye is aligned with not just any body, but with the distinctly maternal body. Her pregnant self a decoy, the filmmaker takes in the world around her, and makes contemporary the tradition of the city film.

Opening narration:
"In August 2004 I was in Berlin. A friend was arriving from Warsaw. I went to the East Train Station to greet her. I filmed the train pulling into the station and my friend getting off, smiling and waving as she walked towards me on the platform. Soon after I mistakenly recorded over her. I then decided to do a performance. As often as possible for the next few months I went to greet that very train arriving daily shortly after 5PM from Warsaw. I was also awaiting the birth of my child."

Berlin Warszawa Express

Programm:  fwd   C - On the Road



Bike

fwd   Oliver Whitehead
FIN 4:30 DV 1999,

A bike ride through the city and at the waterfront that bursts forth with rapid images of the urban surrounding. While this film is challenging the viewer in classical ways of the avant-garde, it also gives a unique construction of vectorial space. The movement being linear, the view is not. It is interesting to think of the represented space, the perceived space, and how it could be described. This short piece of film very nicely demonstrates that movement through the urban environment may be multi-facetted and multi-dimensional while at the same time directional.

Bike

Programm:  fwd   A - Vectorial Space



Blumenthal (work-in-progress)

fwd   Karola Schlegelmilch
DE 7:30 DV 2006

Blumenthal ist der Name einer Hochhaussiedlung im Pariser Randgebiet. Die meisten der Planstädte der Île de France sind durchzogen von floralen Dekorationen, Hainen, und Natursteinelementen. Besonders viele der Orte, die als "cité sensible" gelten, haben Prädikate als ville fleurie erhalten. Was wohl in der Absicht entstand, die Lebensräume attraktiver zu machen, verstärkt den Eindruck des Disparaten zwischen der am Reißbrett entstandenen Wohnsituation und sozialer Wirklichkeit. Der Film bewegt sich an Orten, wo sich Lebendiges nicht an die planerischen Absichten anpasst und wo das Areal in seiner Unüberschaubarkeit den Eindruck einer neuen Art von Landschaft entstehen lässt. Dabei untersucht er die Möglichkeit von Momenten, in denen diese Lebensräume mit dem alltäglichem Dasein verschmelzen.

Blumenthal

Programm:  fwd   C - On the Road



Bullying: Stand Alone

fwd   Jae-Joon Cho
UK 6:50 DV 2005

From the time that I have been investigating human behaviour disorder in our modern society for degree show2005/2006, I intended to explore the social alienation such as the "Bully" which it can be described as an individual who tends to torment others or who uses strength or power to hurt others, either through verbal harassment or physical assaults or through more subtle methods of coercion. It can manifest as individual harassment and the cruel acts (harassment) of the group to an individual.

Harassment by groups may be organized with a group of the same age of the harmer and the victim. More likely these days our society sees the effect on the victim. However people of these days may not see the causes of the harmer. Bullying may circulate through the location of a harmer and a victim and moreover compensation of bullying may be indiscriminate. Bullying by a group can be described as entrapment, estrangement (alienation), contempt, violence and harassment. Family violence, disapproval of attendance, suicide, mental disorder and can be the results of bullying by a mass.

Bullying - Stand Allone

Programm:  fwd   B - City Labs



Coney Island

fwd   Stephane Leonard
DE 25:00 DV 2006

"On the pier the poorest of the poor live and fish and in the dark backroads behind the carousels one can buy weapons and drugs. In summer this is hardly visible for the tourists, between all those colored lamps, Hot Dog and Burgershops, roller coasters and freak shows, so that one gets the feeling of a normal bathing resort. However, in winter the sad emptiness of this former 'No Go area' and the mexican and afro-american workers who scantily repair the park trying to keep it in good condition, are the only ones left. "

"In my film I am trying to show the changes and inconstancy of this place focussing on the Off-Season and a typical night in the main season. Not only the portrait of a place, but also a study about the people in Coney Island and therefore about the American culture in general originates. Tourists and locals, beggars, children, sportsmen, illegal and legal immigrants appear like actors in a film about the human highs and lows. Tensely the camera listens in a waiting posture, often from the frog (rabbit) perspective to the conversations and the soundtrack which completely composes itself from the atmospheric sounds of this place."

Coney Island

Programm:  fwd   C - On the Road



Cultivated Plants

fwd   Karin Ludmann
UK 54sec DV 2002

Shooting trees ... a harmless tourist video (taking place in Nice/F) documents all of a sudden a strange natural phenomenon.

Urbanism often defines a strange fusion of nature and culture which culminates in a violent atmosphere. It often directs against man and nature to the same extent and develops its own unpredictable dynamics.

Cultivated Plants

Programm:  fwd   E - Installationloops



Daley Plaza

fwd   Paul Druecke
USA 4:50 DV 2006

A Public Space: 2003 (in progress)
So far realized: Daley Plaza, Chicago, and Mainstreet Square, Houston

A Public Space invites twenty-four people from different walks-of-life to photograph the same public space. Participants photograph any aspect of the space that they choose, and are responsible for selecting one image to be presented alongside the other twenty-three photos. Druecke prints the images and arranges for their exhibition. The images are not edited for inclusion‹the resulting views may be individually unique, overlap marginally, or become redundant.

The town square is the historical center for civic communication. Despite that role being taken over by mass media long ago, the importance of the city center persists. The urban experience remains communal. There are tacit agreements that allow a public square to function. Tourists flock, workers lunch, panhandlers work, and civic groups make their stand in Daley Plaza. The term "public space" conveys the idea that we share ownership, or at least share a stake in these places. How is this notion evidenced when viewed through different eyes?

Daley Plaza

Programm:  fwd   D Chicago ­ Elegiac Realism



Das Geheimnis von LE, 1 Episode: Too Much Land for One Man

fwd   Anke Haarmann [AHA]  u. fwd  Irene Bude DE 11:00 DV 2005

Im Frühjahr 2004 bekam die Künstlerin Anke Haarmann aus Hamburg den Auftrag von der Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst ein künstlerisches Projekt über schrumpfende Städte in Ostdeutschland zu realisieren. Sie entschied sich für Leipzig. Warum Leipzig? Leipzig ist Boomtown und Leerstandsgebiet ­ diese Mischung interessierte Haarmann. Sie lud die Filmemacherin Irene Bude aus Dresden/Hamburg ein an dem Projekt mitzuarbeiten. Gemeinsam haben sie dem Geheimnis von LE hinterher recherchiert...

Kann man Gemüse auf Brachen anbauen? Warum wird der Brühl abgerissen? Wofür mussten die Mieter im Wintergartenhochhaus kämpfen? Sind alternative Projekte und Hausbesetzungen eine Medizin gegen Leerstand? Kann man Geschichte in alten Häusern finden?

Das Geheimnis von LE ist eine inszenierte Dokumentation über Menschen in Leipzig, die mit Brachen, Leerstand, Abriss und Sanierung auf ihre eigene Art umgehen.

Das Geheimnis von LE

Programm:  fwd   B - City Labs



Detroit Park

fwd   Julie Murray
USA 8:00 DV 2005,

"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

Julie Murray's camera is driven by impulses of awe and reflection. In Detroit Park she does not celebrate the ‘good old times’ but she rather encompasses future and past in one movement that reveales otherwise unseen layers of overlapping times in the urban mesh.

Detroit Park

Programm:  fwd   A - Vectorial Space



Drum Symphony — Rumpu Zinfonia

fwd  Seppo Renvall
FIN 21 min DV 2005

The camera meanders through artificial architectural space: architecture models. However, all the models are representing built architecture in Helsinki. The camera speeds up, the low-resolution video quality and lighting create sensations of real space, of emotional space. Thus, the film reinterprets the imagination and conception of materialized architecture, or more so, the ways architectural space has been depicted before being realized. Rumpu Zinfonia is the film that inspired the program vectorial space.

"I shoot all material vith a cheap HP digital camera and a little flashlight. All the color effects and pixilation comes with the camera. I like the quality of it and you can shoot as long shots as the batteries lasts." "

Synopsis : Drum Symphony is a video about Finnish arcitecture in small scale in combination with drummings. The music was recorded in different acustic situations in Helsinki without any electronic sounds."

Rumpu Zinfonia

Programm:  fwd   A - Vectorial Space



Fear Itself...Yeah Right

fwd   Ivan Martinez
USA 7min DV 2006

"According to the media and government officials we have much to fear, despite what FDR once proclaimed. With anxiety on the rise, running scared is all we have left, at least to warn others of the impending doom. This custom animation and action script allows me to frantically run through the streets typing out my fears for all to know in real time. If needed my character could stop running to converse with someone on the street, but when fear strikes, its off and running again."

"Fear Itself, by Miami based Ivan Martinez, is a street art projection using custom action script in which he runs scared through the streets typing in his fears which are then projected on building facades. The works combines concepts on the running tiger of Karolina Sobecka´s Wildlife, previoulsly mentioned here and Paul Notzold´s "What/Who Are You Afraid Of?", described here. According to Wooster Ivan started in August doing guerrilla projections of images on the new building developments that are appearing in and around downtown Miami.
He continued to do them until one night he and his friends were pulled over by the Miami police with their guns pointed inches from their head through the driver and passenger side windows. After two hours of being called anarchists and that what they were doing was not art and just fucking around he decided to stop doing the projections to work on other projects." (Placebokatz)

Fear Itself...Yeah Right

Programm:  fwd   B - City Labs



Fluctuation Theme

fwd   Jani Ruscia FIN 7:00 DV 2005,

Fluctuation Theme is part of a trilogy, "Contrapunctual".
In Fluctuation Theme, a group of men and women move slowly forward in a huge building site close to the waterfront, one of the grounds where entirely new quarters of Helsinki are being build in the last couple of years. "The movement of the group, engaged in singing a languorous choral chant, gradually reveals internal dynamics and implied relationships, giving way to hypothesis and suggestions about the nature of their action. The entire scenario is created by the interaction of the possible future landscape and the passage of human figures, thus becoming a place of pure possibility, where the role of each one is still to be invented and defined without proceeding from any definite premises." (Luigi Fassi)

Fear Itself...Yeah Right

Programm:  fwd   A - Vectorial Space



Helsinki Walks

fwd   Klaus W. Eisenlohr
DE 60min DV 2007

Helsinki Walks is showing images of Helsinki's urban land- and cityscape. Made out of stills, which are being superimposed through transitions that seem to slowly melt one images into the other, the film represents first impressions of light, landscape and architecture when the artist explored the city for his panorama photography project "Familiar Spaces - Helsinki" during his residency at HIAP in Finland.

Helsinki Walks

Programm:  fwd   E - Installationloops



Inside

fwd   Seppo Renvall
FIN 5:00 DV 2004

This film shows the sensations of a visitor of Sao Paulo, who is being taken out by car. His remoteness becomes a symbol for the impossibility to grasp the "reality" of the city, while being confronted with the realilty of being driven around.

Inside

Programm:  fwd   C - On the Road



Interstate Part One

fwd   Julia Halperin + fwd   Jason Cortlund
USA 6:00 DV 2006

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Interstate Part One

Programm:  fwd   D Chicago - Elegiac Realism



Janeiro

fwd   Seppo Renvall
FIN 3:00 DV 2004

"Janeiro" depicts one of the sensations of small incidents in the neighborhood, we only have being a foreigner to the place. Perceptions of the environment being lost in daily life, which now become precious — or annoying — to the fresh eyes and ears.

Janeiro

Programm:  fwd   C - On the Road



Leerstelle-Rückbau

fwd   Ushi F. und fwd   Walter Gramling DE 11 min DV 2003

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Programm:  fwd   E - Installationloops



Lions and Tigers and Bears

fwd   Rebecca Meyers
USA 12 16mm 2006

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Lions and Tigers

Programm:  fwd   D Chicago ­ Elegiac Realism



Mainstreet Square

fwd   Paul Druecke
USA 4:50 DV 2004

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Programm:  fwd   D Chicago ­ Elegiac Realism



Nocturnal Dance

fwd   Thanos Chrysakis UK 8:43 DV 2003

"Somewhere in the city of Prague an encounter with a nocturnal dance. A dance in two planes simultaneously."

With this musically composed observation of two dancers rehearsing in public, Thanos Chrysakis puts forward an almost imaginary vision of public and private space as an interwoven ensemble. The intimacy of the rehearsal at the same times seems to open up the spaces both of the dancers and the public.

Mainstreet Square

Programm:  fwd   A - Vectorial Space



Observatory

fwd   Virginie Laganière CAN 2min DV 2006

"A scrutinizing gaze surveils the passage of people in a downtown park. Vision is partially altered: have the senses become deficitary or is it an electronic blur ? The gaze shifts to an observation point which embraces the park, pursues pedestrian trajectories until it reaches the intimate sphere of a walking couple. But to whom does this gaze belong, what is it really ?"

The observatory, looking from above, supposedly is the point of vue of power, and closest to objective mapping. Virginie Laganière takes a more complex stance.

Observatory

Programm:  fwd   A - Vectorial Space



One Eye Open

fwd   Sari Carel
USA 5:44 DV 2006,

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One Eye Open

Programm:  fwd   A - Vectorial Space



Sister Cities

fwd   Joe Merrell
USA 10 min DV 2006

Sister Cities consists of a series of 3D anaglyph images shot The central symbol of the piece is the Sister Cities signpost, spot or providing immediately useful information, the Sister directions to places thousands of miles away. In this sense Angeles ­ a sort of center without a center, a place in many intended to extend the metaphor, consisting of recordings samples of recordings from TV, radio and the internet.

Sister Cities

Programm:  fwd   E - Installation loops



Sonata

fwd  Edyta Stepien   fwd  Margaret Noble USA 18:09 DV 2006

Interested in the collaborative fusion between audio and video, analogue and synthesized, Margaret Noble and Edyta Stepien decided to explore these dichotomies through a contemporary reinterpretation of the classical form ‘Sonata.’ Through the sounds and imagery of architecture and nature, this piece works to examine our current environmental conditions. Modeled on a pictorial score and recorded as a live performance mix, "Sonata" alternates between nature and urban industry in the settled terrains of the American Midwest.

Sonata

Programm:  fwd   D Chicago ­ Elegiac Realism



Soprus

fwd   Anu Pennanen
FIN 30:00 DV 2006

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Soprus

Programm:  fwd   B - City Labs



There Is Nothing There

fwd   Katerina Seda
CZ 14:00 DV 2003,

Ponětovice. A village close to Brno in Czeque Republique. No post office, no school. One Saturday in May 2003, evrybody in town is doing what they usually do on Saturdays, just they do it at the same time. This game set up by Kateřina Šedá 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.

"My biggest public project was a party game called ‘THERE’S NOTHING THERE’. … From the questionaires handed out to the citizens of the village I found out that all families spent Saturdays in the countryside in a similar way. I also discovered that nowadays people from a village live with a certain skepticism, as they feel that all the important things happen in the city (they say ‘there is NOTHING’ in their village.) I therefor set myself the task of pointing out this NORMALITY."

There Is Nothing There

Programm:  fwd   B - City Labs



Visual Violence

fwd   Oliver Whitehead
FIN 5:30 DV 1994,

This film explores surfaces of the ordinary urban environment, which surround us in daily life, and which we usually blind out from our consciousness. It is not uglyness the filmmaker is interested in, it is the relation we have to this surrounding. And maybe, it is also the sensations we would live through if we would open our senses to unrestricted perception of this surrounding.

Visual Violence

Programm:  fwd   A - Vectorial Space



Wo ist Denkmal?

fwd   Jeremy Beaudry
USA 3:18 DV 2005

"Produced in former East Berlin, this video wonders aloud where the old monuments from the days of the GDR have gone and what their absence tells us about the politics of German reunification as well as the provisional and personal nature of monuments and the public spaces they demarcate."

A visual layering and spatial construction that seems to question the place of a former monument for missing links.

Visual Violence

Programm:  fwd   A - Vectorial Space



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