“Stripping” means: the removal of layers, of surfaces; “stripping” means: exposing the structure. In striptease, the shells are artfully removed so that the eye can fall on the desired object. In the case of this exhibition in the GAK, the desired object was: the city.
Forty years after the inauguration of Brasília, the capital of Brazil, the video film “Brasília-Brasiliândia” by Ania Corcilius (Hamburg) attempts to trace what remains of the promises and wishes that were linked to the founding of this city. The film takes place in an intercity bus, with which a 30-person travel party sets off from the province, the small town of Brasiliândia, for the capital. In the course of the film, all the travellers develop their own view of the history and significance of Brasília. While the built city can only be seen in a few moments from the moving bus, a complex image of the “capital of hope” emerges in the mind.
With “Frankfurtress Ghetto Blast”, Paula Roush (London) transfers findings from critical urban theory into the aesthetics of a computer game. Using the example of Frankfurt am Main, a global player in international finance, changes in urban geography are illustrated, as is the segmentation of urban spaces into central, globally networked and marginalized areas. The ‘space of flows’ of international transactions collides with the spatial needs of local residents, a conflict that cannot be resolved.
The large-scale installation by Achim Bitter (Bremen) develops a rather indirect, metaporic relationship to the city. Action, condensation and dispersion, recycling, re-signification are the elements of a heterogeneous, labyrinthine sculpture without centre and without periphery, whose prerequisites are based on the experience and analysis of public space. Processual spatial construction is presented here, which demonstratively knows nothing about needs and forms of use, but precisely for this reason can break up narrowly defined functionality in order to arrive at the not-yet-conscious of spatial behaviour.
Curated by
Eva Schmidt