Output details

Plänterwald : [Video and photographic installation]

The significance of Plänterwald lies in its examination of the relationship between camera movement and architecture to explore failed or neglected political concepts. Filmed on the site of a former German Democratic Republic amusement park, the video installation interprets the park as a monument to a failed project while highlighting its fascination as a relic to former socialist ideology, design and culture. Paradoxically, security guards patrol this derelict site maintaining its separation from public space and contemporary life while positioning it in the present social, political and economic conditions. The camera in Plänterwald configures the enduring power of the past and points to that which lingers below the surface of the current state of affairs. Plänterwald was commissioned by The Québec City Biennial (2010). The National Gallery of Canada exhibited and acquired the work for their permanent collection. Further international exhibitions and screenings include 53 Art Museum, Guangzhou, China, Centre Pompidou, Paris and ICA, London.

The originality of the work lies in the innovative use of camera movement derived from the topography of the site – looping circular pathways – and its architecture. The camera takes on the persona of the former rides in a series of extended tracking shots -hovering, suspending and looping in a disorientating way. It re-configures the history of the site and exposes its current condition of suspended animation.

The work is concerned with the specific evocations of the complex relationships between camera and subject and the individual and the social. Architectures’ spatiality, design and function are formative in their impact on our perception of ourselves as individuals and on the organisation of society around us. This relationship between the individual and the environment, in which each provides a context and a set of conditioning influences for the other, is paralleled through the camera movement.