Urban Research 2008


urban research on film - directors lounge 2008
film / video / installation


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urban research
program A:
psychogeography — psychogeographie

Friday 08 February 2008

program 20:00

Directors Lounge, Scala Friedrichstr. 112A, Berlin-Mitte

Psychogeography as term has become popular with the Renaissance of the ideas of Situationism International. It is not an academic subject matter, but a way to directly interact with the urban environment and to research the subjective and political entanglement of places and cities. The program presents a wide range of such artistic responses to psychological impacts and urban geography.

 

Elise Florenty
Autops, 6:30, DVD, DE, 2007

Thomas Fuerhapter
Das Gelb ohne Zebra, 24:00, color/b/w, DVD, AU, 2004

Surveillance Camera Players
1984, 9:00, DVD, USA, 2003

Sari Carel
Cast + Bridge, 8:51, DVD, USA, 2007

Berit Hummel
Ein weites Land, 10:38, HDTV, DE, 2007

Steven Ball
No-way Street, 1:00, DVD, UK, 2007

Ken Paul Rosenthal
I My Bike, 5:50, 16mm/ DVD, USA, 2001

Elke Marhöfer
helle nacht nichten, 20:00, DVD, DE 2004,

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Autops Cast + Bridge
1984 Das Gelb ohne Zebra
Ein Weites Land I My Bike
No-way Street helle nacht nichten

The Surveillance Camera Players both used and protested again CCTV recording with playacts specifically designed for surveillance cameras.
Sari Carel photographs abandoned contemporary houses in Israel. She thus reflects on the left behind dreams, promises and plans connected with single-family houses.
Thomas Fuerhapter and Ken Paul Rosenthal give a voice to psychological effects of urban experiences, not avoiding the irony of the possibility to overrate such experience.
Elke Marhöfer deconstructs the interaction of political talks by young international artists, and confronts those with her own media interaction with young black youths in the streets of New York. She is thus reflecting the mixture of failure and need of such practise.

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Urban Research 2008
urban research
program B:
Modernity, a Space to Live? — Wohnraum und Moderne

Part 1 Sunday, 10 February 2008   18:00

program starts in time

Directors Lounge, Scala Friedrichstr. 112A, Berlin-Mitte

Public housing has gained a renewed interest. With the recent developments in Europe, the demographic changes, new mobility and the neo-liberal changes of local governance, modernist public housing projects need to be revisited and reconsidered.

 

Andreas Warisz
Untitled, 9:00, 2 channel HD, USA/DE, 2007

Zsolt Keserue
Rounding Off, 24:00, DVD, HUN, 2007

Eleonore de Montesquiou
Sillimae, 18:00 b/w DVD DE 2006

Rita Bakacs
Wohnkomplex BRD, 29:00, DVD, DE, 2006

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Untitled Untitled
Rounding Off Sillimae
Wohnkomplex BRD WohnkomplexBRD

The films of Rita Bakasc and Zsolt Keserue look at prefabricated socialist panel buildings in Halle-Saale and Budapest, how the modernist industrial architecture became a home, and which radical changes those neighbourhoods undergo.
Andreas Warisz portraits a special and rare 60's tower block in Chicago, rare, as in difference to other "projects" it seems to function well as community, and the architecture, built by the Marina City architect
Bertrand Goldberg, seems to be appreciated by the inhabitants. Elise de Montesquiou, on the other hand, portraits former "Atom Cities" in Russia, cities which were "closed", isolated and specifically supported during the times of Soviet Union. Here, she searches the faces of people, who have to cope with a totally changed economic base and the remoteness from the political and economical centres in Russia.


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Urban Research 2008
urban research
program C:
surfaces and texture — oberflächen de städtischen

Part 2 Monday, 11 February 2008   22:00

Part 1 Tuesday, 12 February 2008   20:00


Directors Lounge, Scala Friedrichstr. 112A, Berlin-Mitte

In German, surface and superficiality are almost the same word. Still, reading surfaces is part of the urban experience. Traces, scars and injuries mark the textures. Structures, patterns and repetitions need to be read.

part 1 - 16mm special

Telemach Wiesinger,
3 x 1, 10:00, 16mm, b/w, DE, 2007

Cari Machet
Manahatta, 10:00, DVD, USA, 2007,

Stephanie Gray
Gertel's galore .. lore .. ore, 7:00, silent, DVD, USA, 2007

Masha Godovannaya
objects in mirror are closer than they appear 61:00, DV, RU, 2007


part 2

Jens Lüstraeten
Fifteen Minutes of Fame, 15:00, DVD, DE, 2007

Vera Brunner-Sung
The Garden City, 13:30, 16mm/ DVD, USA, 2007

Astrid Menze
Daily, 1:00, DVD, DE, 2007

Deborah Philips
71, 7:30, 16mm Sound, DE, 2005

Eric Fleischauer and Jesse McLean
D R I F T Promontory Point, 5:17, DVD, USA, 2007

Ben Russell
B/W Trypps #3, 12:00, DVD, USA , 2007

Jani Ruscica
Beatbox, 8:40, DVD, FIN, 2007

Tibor Gulyás, Balazs Irimias
Mobility, 5:00, DVD, HUN, 2003


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Manahatta Gertels galore
3x1 objects in mirror are closer than they appear
Fifteen Minutes of Fame Daily
71 D R I F T  Promontory Point
B-W Trypps 3 Beatbox
The Garden City Mobility

For the external viewer, traffic and masses become as much part of the surface as individual gestures and clothing. In this program, the surfaces and textures of Bengalore, Chicago, New York and the suburbs of Las Vega are being read and reflected on. The textures shown on film and video in return become surfaces of projected perceptions and inner views.


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Urban Research 2008
urban research
program D:
reversible urban practices (film lecture — filmvortrag)

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

program 20:00

Directors Lounge, Scala Friedrichstr. 112A, Berlin-Mitte

The successful production of contemporary lived urban space lies in inhabiting rather than in building and is predominantly a cultural process. It is city dwellers' capacity to constantly reinvent the city through their own desires and subjectivities that forms the bases of urban life. While "building" entails a static and conceptual process, "inhabiting" is dynamic, undetermined and participatory.

Merce Rodrigo Garcia
inhabiting vs. building japanese documentary, a paradigm for a reversible urban practice - film lecture, 80:00, lecture and screening, ESP/JAP

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Reversable Urban Practice

Industrial and technological development has made Urban Planning an instrument at the service of national economies to compete globally. Rapid urban transformation has not only had an impact on the environment but has also originated a kind of social pollution whereby social and familial structures disintegrate.
On the other hand unprecedented social diversification demands the participation of urban dwellers to describe new terms towards the production of a lived urban space. In contrast with leading urban practices that further global competition through construction this presentation explores the productive capacity of virtual environments to stimulate urban life with the participation of City Dwellers.
From that perspective this presentation analyzes the tactics of certain Japanese Documentalsts in virtual space-time towards the actualization of urban life. In so doing traditional Architect's methods such as ideology and the concept, are reconsidered through notions of participation and subjectivity. These tactics are then argued as a benchmark for an entirely new urban practice in line with today's urban milieu and with the changing concerns of the majority of urban dwellers.


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Urban Research 2008

urban research
program E:
past and present utopias - utopien gestern und heute
Saturday, 16 February

doors open 18:00
program 18:30

Directors Lounge, Scala Friedrichstr. 112A, Berlin-Mitte

Depictions of Utopia are past visualisations of the future, even with today's speeded-up technical and social transformation of urban life.

Urban Research Institute
URI-trailer, 3:00, DVD, DE, 2007

Clemens Fürtler
Bildmaschine, 3:42, DVD, AU, 2007

raumlaborBerlin, Matthias Rick und Florian Riegel
u(topie) 18, 45:00, 2 channel DVD, DE, 2007

Maya Schweizer, Clemens von Wedemeyer,
METROPOLIS, report from China. 42:00, DVD, DE, 2006


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URI-trailer Bildmaschine
METROPOLIS report from China METROPOLIS report from China
u(topie) 18

The highway A18 localized in the old steel districts of Germany was - at the time it was built - an utopian project that became reality. What is being considered as inhuman today, the joint public and individual traffic in one axis through residential and commercial areas was back then the most advanced planning of its time. Maya Schweizer and Clemens von Wedemeyer, on the other hand, find imagery almost identical to Fritz Lang's film Metropolis in Shanghai. On a visual level, they ask about the meaning of this reappearance of past futuristic visions. The pictures Clemens Fürtler retrieves from his "image machine", a model-sized racing track, seem to be equally utopian-real, although the déjà-vues he is creating, possibly rather relate to the realism of media than to real-life experiences. A brief presentation of Urban Research Institute in Nürnberg completes the program with playful free-will acts in the contemporary city.



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Urban Research 2008

urban research
program F:
Loop and Installations

during urban research nights

doors open 18:00


Directors Lounge, Scala Friedrichstr. 112A, Berlin-Mitte

Just to point out a couple of highlights in the divers "Loop" program of Urban Research: "13tershop" (13th-shop) is an interactive CD-Rom, which stitches together a variety of stories. The impressions and interviews were collected by the artists F. Thalhofer and K. Mensing during a one month residency at a mega-mall in Germany.

"Hackney Girl" also knits together impressions, snapshots and stories in a filmic mosaic. The Flash presentation tells the story differently each time it is viewed.
Thus the semi-documentary shows the daily life of a young woman in Hackney, a Southern part of London. Both "films" find a very interesting, floating way of narration, which as a result, give much more importance to the surrounding and the environment than conventional storytelling.

The loop and installation program of Urban Research has been structured in close proximity to the screening program and will be shown accordingly on the programmed days.

Loop Future

Elise Florenty
City Legend, 2:57, DE, 2003

Sophie Warren and Jonathan Mosley
First Station of a Lost City, 2:16, UK 2007

Thilo Fröbel
demonstration, performance, 5:00, DE, 2007

Ellen Bornkessel
Happy Ones

Casilda Sanchez
Insides, 4:00, ESP, 2005

Carlo Ghioni
Citycom, 9:20, CAN/ITAL, 2004

Maya Schweizer
Your destiny depends on your lucky charm's mood (today), 10:22, DE, 2003


Loop Surface

Lemeh42, Santini Michele, Paoloni Lorenza
12 night, 2:00, IT

Claudius Pratsch
Shanghai Rythm, 11:00, DE, 2007

Joe Merrell
Universal Now, 10:28, USA, 2007

Wolf Kahlen
Kyoto - Raw Material on sublime beauty, 13:20, DE, 2002

France Dubois
Volta, 7:00, 2007

Waltraut Tänzler
Regentage, DE, 2007

Stephana Schmidt
Berlin - taken from the surface, 23:00, DE, 2006

Julie Meyer
En Construction, 4:16, FR/DE, 2007

Augustin Gimel
Je n'ai pas du tout l'intention de sombrer, 4:45, FR, 2002


Loop Psychogeography

Martin Brand
Remote, 12:30, NL, 2007

Paddy Jolley
Hereafter, 10:00, UK, 2004


Loop Housing/Construction

Veikko Björk
Environment in Process - Arabianranta-area, 6:00, FIN, 2006

Willliam English
Ex Library, 20:00, UK, 2007

Kati Klages und Kathrin Eckert
Drei oder Vier oder Fünf Welten, 21:20, DE, 2007

Stefan Shankland
Chantier HQAC, 20:00, FR, 2007

Ian Flitman
Hackney Girl, 2x 15 min, UK, 2007


Loop Interaction

Mairisch Verlag, Florian Thalhofer und Kolja Mensing
13tershop, DE, 2007

ststs - Stef Stagel und Steffen Schlichter
Bildhauer, DE, 2005

Sabrina Harri
Discussion Room 005, 4:27, FIN/CH, 2006

Ina Hattebier
vor hinter neben <mir> unter über auf, 16:35, DE, 2006


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City Legend First Station of a Lost City
demonstration, performance Happy Ones
Insides Your destiny depends on your lucky charm's mood
Citycom 12 night
Universal Now Volta
Regentage Berlin - taken from the surface
Kyoto - Raw Material on sublime beauty Je n'ai pas du tout l'intention de sombrer
Drei oder Vier oder Fünf Welten Hereafter
En Construction Remote
Environment in Process - Arabianranta-area Ex Library
Chantier HQAC Hackney Girl
13tershop Bildhauer
Discussion Room 005 vor hinter neben mir unter über auf


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