SPACE INVADERS
Space and distance are divided and multiplied, expanded and condensed, enclosed and set free – in films that take us through, between, over, under, into and out of man-made structures.
Spatial design is not only visual but touches all the senses and these amazing films reveal the inherent poetry and psychology of architecture as seen through the camera’s eye.
Inge Lise Hansen Traveling Fields (NO / 35mm / 9mins / 2009)
From the toxic landscape of northern Russia, Hansen’s camera turns our world and perceptions upside-down. The sky is made of roughcast concrete, which somehow liquefies and slides past us, while the ground becomes iridescent and ambiguous. We feel the ground shift beneath us during this time lapsed gem.
Gordon Matta-Clark City Slivers US / !6mm / 15mins /1976)
Images of the deconstruction of abandoned buildings and industrial structures are closely associated with “anarchitect” Gordon Matta-Clark .In City Slivers tall skinny crop shots of the city’s day-to-day activities are projected next to each other as people, traffic and the Manhattan architecture merge into one fluid strip of celluloid
Gerard Holthuis Hong Kong (NL / 35mm / 13mins / 1999)
The city of Hong Kong is often seen as a living example of the Virilian notion of a space traversed by different times and speeds. Before the old city airport (Kai Tak) was closed in 1998, Holthuis filmed the approach and the passing by of the airplanes from the middle of the city. The high contrast stock gives an early cinema feel to the images – the planes seem intrusive, out of place and out of time.
Takashi Ito Spacey (JAP / 16mm / 10mins / 1981)
Based on 700 photographs of a university gym, Spacey creates a series of dizzying visual movements that break into one multiple layered space after another. All the components are strictly combined in an endless cycle, a Möbius strip, an Escher-like film in a Japanese tempo, from slow to fast, from pianissimo to fortissimo.
Nancy Holt Sun Tunnels (US / 16mm / 26mins / 1978)
Sun Tunnels documents the making of Holt’s major site-specific sculptural work in the northwest Utah desert. Completed in 1976, the sculpture features a configuration of four concrete “tunnels” that are positioned to align with the sunrise and sunset of the summer and winter solstices. A kind of American Stonehenge, Sun Tunnels charts the yearly and daily cycles of the sun, and calls attention to human scale and perception within the vast desert landscape. This film includes stunning footage of the changing sun and light as framed by the tunnels on the solstices.
Greg Pope. 