Above: Video samples from the almost 365 movies rendered. My Temporary Visiting Position From The Sunset Terrace Bar  launched on the occasion of Nodes, a show involving seven artists and seven museums in Germany conceived by curator Matthias Weiß.

Set in the city of Ahlen, in Germany, “My Temporary Visiting Position From The Sunset Terrace Bar”, imitates an amateur’s film of the landscape framed at sunset. While the city strip is prerecorded the sky is captured in real time from a webcam shooting the sky of Naples (Italy) at sunset and as such, always changing. The project stayed online for about a year. People visiting the website could choose upon two ways to experience the work: a live mode, and the archived mode. The live mode was generating smaller size movies. It was available only during the year the project run online and it was open only in a specific time frame during the sunset in Naples. This time frame was dynamic and it changed with seasons. The Archived mode was available browsing through the public archive where you could find time accelerated HD versions, daily rendered using bigger images gathered from the previous day.

The work, confronting themes such as exile, migration and border control, is enhanced by a poem by the esteemed author Ghada Samman and music by the international band Gotan Project and composer Gabriel Yared.

Code by Agustin Garzon Mason

sculpture

Following the example of what I’ve done for “The Possible Ties…”, in 2009 I made a sculpture to view and sell this work. It’s a small house, a formal reduction of the only visible part of the house always appearing in close-up on the left of the screen. The house where we see the two fugitives escape. The model, in polished stainless steel, contains a video iPod with 30 renderings of a month of online life, a micro video projector and a speaker with audio output. You can walk down the street with the sculpture in your hands, diffusing the music and video projecting the film on any surface. While the film adheres to the shape of the surroundings, the reality is reflected and fragmented on the metal surface of the sculpture.

 

GHADA SAMMAN POETRY: In exile my friend, you are no more than a seat in a public park. They’ll sit on you, rest, feel happy thank you and go
At home, you are a seat in the sultan’s garden, he alone sits on you, rests, feels happy, but does not thank you and never leaves.