Building stories #002:
Love Suffering Mechanical Disorder
Els Opsomer's recent film series Building Stories deals with the fate of modern utopias. Begun in 2007, the series' general interest is based on how architecture captures contemporary zeitgeist and how people deal with the idea of utopia today. By means of film-travelogues through the monumental architectural legacy of modern architecture, Opsomer grasps the lost "grandeur" of the once so promising modern evolution of the human race.
The first film questions the fate of Atatürk Kültür Merkezi (AKM), the opera house in Istanbul, which once symbolized the utopia of a Modern Turkey and is now in danger of being demolished. Conceived as a portrait of the AKM, the work pays tribute or is even an early posthumous homage to all other "ghosts" of the utopian society that once colored the urban landscape. In this way Building Stories #1 is an ironic salute to a modernist architectural heritage of non-places, yet to be demolished, but "pretty much doomed."
In Building Stories #2-a fi lm installation commissioned by Brussels Biennial to show in its first 2008 edition-Opsomer investigates the fascinating architectural heritage of Brussels along the modernistic North-South junction. "Brussels," according to the artist, "is in constant decay and renewal, generating an infinite stream of inspiration, disbelief, surprise and hope." The once-erected buildings house impressive underground corridors connecting one part of the city to the other by trains and metro, built to lead the working class, living in the countryside, directly from the train to the office without seeing daylight. These are, perhaps not surprisingly, foundations of Brussels' distortion and disconnection.
In connecting the different places of recent utopias and modernisms, the artist is describing a pattern, since they all embody sadness, lost love and glory, and rebuffed affection. Although most of them are no longer functioning, their gigantic surfaces remind us of their looming presence. Opsomer's revisiting these buildings is, as she prefers it to be viewed, rather than being at first glance melancholic, an "ironic deviation of architectural use and a promising future for absurd cities."
Because Building Stories is a continuous swirl between presence, symbolized by the colossal buildings, and absence, due to permanent neglect and eventual destruction, Opsomer chose to use 16 mm film, a medium that requires little light but whose images are never tangible. The work also comprises of still images taken in situ and of documents regarding the buildings. Combined together, this footage serves as the basis of the actual presentation, which allows one to wander around and consider the glory and strangeness of these buildings.
In showing both building stories, she creates a confrontation between two subjective stories, which merge into one lyrical essay about utopia and the preservation of and belief in love, uniting different modern projects into one dynamic installation, containing fi lm, still images, sound and texts. It is an interpretation of the scars that are left in today's cities and an investigation of how twenty first century cities can turn the twentieth century modern ruins into a fresh challenge. This presentation is a portrait and tribute to these buildings that once breathed the promise of the utopian vision, narrated by the buildings themselves.
-Carl Jacobs and Elke Segers