urban research on film - directors lounge 2012
film / video / installation

 Program Overview

urban research
program II:
personal histories and the city's future

Monday, 11 February 2013 — 19:00

Another way to create a place are the mental constructions we do in order to connect with space, unlike official grand narratives. Laura Kraning tells a local legend about "Devil's Gate" connected with Jack Parson and Aleister Crowley, which may be connected with experiences of this place in the periphery of Los Angeles. Michael Poetschko's film Notebooks on Dislocation on the other hand, shows his ways of connecting thoughts with places, and thus his film, instead of being a lament on loss, is a stream of place-related memos. A coherent narrative seems not to be missing, instead it would be inadequate.

Other films provide even more fragmented stories, like Alexander Isaenko, whose images "Wash by Fire" are underlaid by obscure imperatives. Gong Wenbo confronts us with our imagination, what is behind the metal fence in "Le Blue" - the blue city? Kristin Lucas and Claudia Larcher go a step further and present us pure constructions of space, though with a humane twist. Two other filmmakers are concerned with current changing urban environments, Sandra Becker01 "gentrification" and Karl F. Stewart "San Francisco. The unearthly beauty of simulated nature in contemporary architecture".

Mixing experimental fiction, documentary and imaginary spatial representations, this is possibly the most experimental film program of this year's Urban Research. It may also question the common idea of coherent narratives being fundamental for place-making.

In front of my studio window construction work changed the environment. Now it's an elegant expensive area with narrow corners. Life seems to continue and people seem to get used to it. Now the aim is to make money and to live in small boxes.

This is a story of the latent terrorism, the accidental, not realized harm, the loss of reference points.

Explores the metaphysical undercurrents of a Southern California landscape scarred by fire and lyrically depicts the physical and mythological terrain of DevilÕs Gate Dam through a central figure. The film merges a portrait of a transformed landscape with a fragmentary textual narrative.

The camera eats into nothingness, it glides along an empty surface whose rough grain resembles minimalistic interplay of shapes and forms and material analyses that refer the spectators back to themselves. Larcher creates an uncanny mood, though at the same time she goes beyond representation and breathes life into these spaces, making the walls dance.

The Sole Ripper is a digital book that can be experienced as a moving image or interacted with as a film strip. It contains an architectural view of a fictional pedestrian roller coaster modeled for an empty lot in Manhattan.

This is part of a series of seven short movies that can be distinguished for the aesthetic appearance: very bad video quality as a choice. - A monstrous silo, that cloaks the sight, that mortifies the limbs, that obliterates the intellect, that darkens the path. A visual syntax.

Notebooks on Dislocation approaches the complexity of the contemporary city through different perspectives, methods, stories and optics. It is conceptualized as an audiovisual travellogue and assemblage of urban experiences, mnemonic itineraries, notebook entries, and philosophical speculations.

Downtown San Francisco as example of new contemporary city centers in the United States. Its architecture saturated with color stands erect as abstract forms of solid mass shimmering in the sun.

What I am trying to say is these image effects like Blue Screen, through this technology I detach people, scene and objects, then trying to study and understand the relationships among them. From this point on, for me, the colour blue is erasable. The purer the blue is, the more transparent it is.

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Directors Lounge 2012 daily program