CIRCUS, 2004

"Circus" deals in a very unusual way with the construction of space. The video work is based on digital photos of a busy square in Geneva that the artists dissembled into layers and subjected to digital animation. The installation shows a constantly moving view of the city that seems to be disintegrating. Set pieces of urban architecture, logos and passers-by float incalculably and vertiginously towards the viewers. On the basis of the photographic document of a real city, the artists create a three dimensionality that refers indirectly to the virtual 3D worlds of computer games, while at the same time deconstructing the unambiguity and coherence of their spatial order and hyperrealistic graphics.
In addition, the work refers to the way in which we appropriate urban structures. The accelerated movement and navigation in the public space, results in the non-linear perception of our environment, the associative scanning of distinctive points of reference and landmarks and striking details. Accordingly, the customary conception of the city as a homogeneous, clearly structured unified whole, the basis of two-dimensional postcard vistas and the cartographic urban model, gives way to a fragmentary, fleeting, dynamic picture of urban space.

Text by Katrin Mundt for the exhibition's catalogue catalogue "So wie die Dinge liegen / as matter stand", hartware kunst verein + medien_kunst_netz, Dortmund, Germany