Tim Coe

b. 1963, England

The video installation is concerned with reactions to and reflections on the city-image which is currently being marketed as the ‘New Berlin’ – a city recreating itself from the ground up. The surface level of this new city-image is pervaded by one notable principle – the repetition of the unit. One basic window element is repeated to the left, to the right, upwards and downwards. The principle rarely varies, just the scale.

But how do the people who live, work, visit, or just pass through these planned and designed surroundings react? How does this effect the way they act and feel? Do they feel excited and liberated by the newness or rather oppressed by the coldness and the scale? Are the buildings exaggerated to an inhuman size, or are the architects and city planners too cautious to realise buildings on a truly monumental scale?

The video takes as a starting point one window from many prominent buildings. These units are then reassembled and animated in various ways into new façades, sometimes on scales not realisable in practice. The facade sequences are interspersed with static interference as a counterpoint to the geometrical perfection of the architectural images – a reminder that order is a transient deviation from chaos. Distorted words appear like lost transmissions through this interference. The words are textual reflections on the confrontation with this new cityscape.

The installation concept springs directly from the video content in that, through four mirrors assembled into a square kaleidoscope, the video screen is repeated in all directions, virtually into infinity. The result is that the viewer’s entire field of vision is filled with one huge façade, producing reactions from hypnosis to vertigo.

(Text: heroes + holies catalogue, 2002)