Beyond Architecture:
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Good architecture is a visual adventure, a sculpture allowing you to submerge in. Our urban and industrial landscapes reflect history and their public spaces are arenas which harbour unexpected forms of interaction.
MURALLA ROJA – MILENA GIERKE
(Germany 2008, 35mm/DVD, 09:00 min.)
Milena Gierke’s tribute to a house designed by Ricardo Bofill which she visited frequently over the past forty years. A spectacular building without ending where every step offers new perspectives and vistas. An eye-opener revealing the potential beauty of architecture.
GUNKANJIMA – LOUIDGI BELTRAME
(Japan 2010, video, 33:00 min.)
Due to being covered with buildings all over, the mini-island Gunkanjima off the coast of Nagasaki has taken the shape of a battle ship. It symbolizes Japan’s rush into modernity and its carefully planned entry into the industrial age. Beltrame dives into the history of this factory island, that was a habitat of his own.
CITY OF PROGRESS – JUSTIN BENNETT
(Netherlands 2009, video, 11:00 min.)
In this animation, Justin Bennett who recently won the Ouborg price of the City of The Hague, shows how a city grows organically from a small dot to a complicated system of lines and forms in which our desire for utopia is embedded.
11 FRAGMENTS OF JAPAN – PAULIEN OLTHETEN
(Japan 2009, video, 20:28 min.)
The interest of Dutch photographer and artist Oltheten goes out to the city as a public domain and the behaviour of people in public space. As a researcher, she is looking to detect peculiar moments, small gestures and unintended performances of people in public space. Whereas in her previous work, she took the position of passive observer, this video shows her as an active participant with entertaining and at times absurd results.
FUTURE PAST PERFECT PT. 3 (U_08-1) – CARSTEN NICOLAI
(Germany 2009, video, 03:43 min)
On a quiet autumn evening in Tokyo, a man is trying to get a small bottle of tea from a machine, but instead he is treated to a small performance. For this work, which echoes Doug Aitken’s ‘Electric Earth’, Carsten Nicolai, who is also known as Alva Noto, used a track of his album ‘Unitxt’ from 2008.