calendario eventi  :: 

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26/6/2012

The IBB-Videolounge

Berlinische Galerie, Berlin

From 27 June 2012 the IBB-Videolounge will show “Metropolis: Report from China” (2006), a joint film project by Maya Schweizer and Clemens von Wedemeyer. In 2004 the artists travelled to the Chinese megacities Shanghai and Beijing to collect material for a “remake” of the silent Expressionist film “Metropolis”, made in 1927. “Metropolis: Report from China” is a documentary which casts a critical light on the construction boom in China and the social problems associated with it. Fritz Lang’s vision provides a projection foil for a differentiated view of China today.

Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis”, made in 1927, presents the utopian city “Metropolis” as an awe-inspiring backcloth, but also as a dystopian machine. Machinery plays a crucial role in this city, dictating the rhythm of the workers living below ground, whose task is to keep the cogs ceaselessly turning. And it enhances the lives of the wealthy residents above ground: they profit from the technology, which guarantees such comforts as lifts and electric lighting. These machines are not just mediators between the upper and lower city; they govern the social division reflected in the urban architecture. With its presentation of an urban organism, in which built environment, work and technology mutually reinforce each other, “Metropolis” depicts a highly complex urban landscape that takes its cue from visions of constructivist architecture.

In Fritz Lang’s case, New York was the city whose social and architectural fabric so impressed him during a visit in 1924 that it inspired him to make his masterpiece. In 2004, on the other hand, Maya Schweizer and Clemens von Wedemeyer spent a month studying the megacities of China in order to uncover their potential as sets for a remake of “Metropolis”. Their trip was motivated by their fascination for a country under construction, a country redefining itself – China before the Olympic Games and before the first superlative skyscrapers appeared. Their underlying question during the journey was: Will China transform the vision, the “Metropolis blueprint”, into reality?

It comes, perhaps, as a surprise that the film they made in no way resembles the silent movie of 1927, with its heavy symbolism and pathos – not as a genre and not in its cinematic aesthetic. In fact, the documentary “Metropolis. Report from China” is more like a counterpiece: a sober portrait of a country trying to outgrow its own bounds as it edges towards environmental and social catastrophe, for that is what the dystopian images of these hazy megacities suffocating in congested traffic seem to suggest.

Although we are familiar with such pictures, Maya Schweizer and Clemens von Wedemeyer manage to set up a unique tension in their film, notably because there is such a contradiction between what we see and what we hear. In most respects, the imagery clashes with the statements by the interviewees. How could we explain otherwise that, regardless of the the overwhelmingly unbearable living conditions the film depicts, megacities like Shanghai and Beijing, have become such a Mecca, a place of yearning, for Western architects? No doubt because the building work is taking place on such a huge scale, with architecture used as a status symbol. But the outcome of this process has little to do with a “Metropolis”-style utopia. The 21st-century urban Chinese landscape is, rather, an accumulation of over-sized, matter-of-fact buildings made with state-of-the-art technology, bunched together with a density rarely found these days in Europe, or even America.

Maya Schweizer and Clemens von Wedemeyer contrast the cinematic prototype with present reality, inviting us to consider how much the built environment can influence a country and its people. Whereas Lang exaggerated this relationship in parable form, the two artists choose an interpretation of the “Metropolis”- message more in tune with our own times. “Metropolis” is merely the reflective foil against which critical viewers are asked to form their own picture of China today.Maya Schweizer (* 1976 in Maisons-Alfort) and Clemens von Wedemeyer (* 1974 in Göttingen) have not tackled many projects as an artistic duo. Apart from “Metropolis. Report from China”, they have so far worked together on the film “Rien du tout”, screened at the 4th berlin biennale in 2006.

A discussion with Maya Schweizer and Clemens von Wedemeyer is also planned as part of the exhibition “12x12. The IBB-Videolounge at the Berlinische Galerie”. You will find more details and the exact date on our website and in a separate press release closer to the time.

Media partner to the Berlinische Galerie: Wall Ag

Opening Wed 27 June 2012

Berlinische Galerie
Alte Jakobstrasse 124, Berlin

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