Metropolis Now
At the time of its making, Metropolis, Fritz Lang's 1927 film classic, forged a powerful link between art and social / political issues. Additionally, Lang's conceptual and political concerns, together with his interest in vanguard cinematographic and photographic new aesthetic.
When producing the film, Lang took advantage of two Mitchell cameras, revolutionary at the time and respected for their capacity to achieve tricky cinematic maneuvers. In fact, the film maker established a dramatic aesthetic code through the use of innovative technological applications (for instance the systematic mechanical movement of machine handles and clocks, the static robot-like movements achieved by the frontal and symetric camera postions, the silvery metallic overall look).
Like Lang, the artists in Metropolis Now employ advanced technologies to effectively display their video and film images. Furthermore, their work displays a comparably keen connection between technology and aesthetics. Each of the contemporary artists in Metropolis Now have developed a distinct and individual style enhanced by specific and sensitive use of technology.
Another connection between Metropolis and the work in Metropolis Now, is the significant and strong reference to social issues. While Lang, in the original, emphasized the topic of magic versus science, and even more so structures of social difference (the use of the medieval Lower City Unterstadt-populated by standardized, uniformed and robotic worker drones, versus the Higher City Oberstadt-with its well dressed pampered citizens living in pleasure gardens), the artisits in Metropolis Now point out futuristic and often conflicted visions, such as the potentially intrusive Big Brother, psychological effects due to communication by means of new media influences on how we live through modern techlogoy such as global warming, complex references to artificial humans cyborgs.
In Metropolis, Lang quite ironically searched for the soul in the machine. For the force of life, the humanity that might be harbored in the deep original of technology. The scientist Rotwang in the original film exclaims: " I created a machine resembling a human, a machine that never tires, never makes mistakes. Now we no longer need workers to do the work in the machine rooms." In this way, Lang announced the same sentimental concept as Spielberg later did in the recent movie A.I: Artificial Intelligence when a robot developes intelligence and emotion, finally becoming a human machine, a part cyborg, part human creation with actual human feelings and sensitivity. The investigation of the nature and potentials of the machine its relationship to life and how it might alter our understanding of reality and life, is also a central concern for the artists in Metropolis Now.
On the surface the artists in Metropolis Now seem to create visually poetic and beautiful images. However as with Lang, these images can easily slip into more brooding psychological dimensions. For instance the frequent incapacity of humanity to effect change, even when confronted by immenent catastrophe. In Lang's film, the workers in the Lower City are aware of their dependecy on the dictatorship of machines, yet they remain incapable of escaping the evil influence of the scientist masterminding the whole scheme.This theme of passive confirmism is echoed in Ricardo Zuleta's Zulueta Zone, picking up on the theme of mass collective consciousness, when depicting a group of people clad in uniform outfits, while undergoing a psychological test regarding their reactions to enviroments.
In Jeremy Blake's digital animation Station to Station, the sensory excitement of travel is delivered through hypnotic images and bright pulsating city lights. However at a blink of an eye, the image reverses into a vision of an alienating urban transit system.
Study for Morning After the Deluge, by Paul Pfeiffer, depicts an Atlantic sunrise and a Pacific sunset shot in real times and digitally spliced together, lending a certain inconsistency to the image: does it represent a joyous creation of the world or an apocalyptic fin du monde vision?
Ebru Özseçen's The red architecture Venetian machine boy's dream ornament, presented in a cluster of seven book size digital screens, is decorative and animated with a more edgy erotic energy. During his first visit to New York, Lang was inspired by the futuristics architecture of the place-the Gotham look of which has influenced a number of other cinematographers and artists, including Spielberg in A.I:, with his vision of the New York skyline circa 4000 A.D., nearly totally sunken into the ocean, existing as a relic of a forelorn past. Özseçen Pippin and Frank Scurti in their works, all meld past, present and future realities while trying to adress uncertain global changes in an increasingly fast paced dot.com world where the future is now. In Amnesic Cinema, Scurti depicts a simple mechanical escalator in a Paris subway station. The camera stealthily looks through glass panels, so that passersby appear and dissappear, and become part of an endlessly routine architectural image in constant motion that uncannily recalls the uniform, hypnotized motions of the workers in Metropolis shuffling through the ominous vapors of the machine rooms. The metal bands encircling the monitor of Steven Pippin's Executive Toy recall the strobes of light around the robot Maria's head in Metropolis. In Pippin's work the head is replaced by a screen showing a globe turning counterclockwise, a flat video image of the earth as seen from space. A small figure is seated in front of the monitor, turning around it, a motionless "couch potato,"watching the world on a TV screen. "In investigating the relation of the terrestrial to the universal, of the ideological to the viewfinder itself, Pippin opens up newsatellitic, telescopic, disenchanting-vistas." (Nico Israel, Artforum, Summer 1997) The dispair of humankind, which can be seen throughtout Metropolis, but especially in the uproar of the workers, is also apparent in Slater Bradley's Gargoly. A young woman frozen on the edge of a building wants to escape the limitations of life by attempting suicide (see Maria as robot in Metropolis, killed in the end in flames).The use of the "amateur camera" and the out of focus effect make the whole scene seem intentionally unrealistics and staged. In Body Song, when depicting an apocalyptic vision of a world disappearing into nothingness, Jonathan Horowitz seems to symbiotically pick up on both the flooding of the machine rooms in Metropolis and the mechanically choreographed movements og Lang's robotic world. The music added to the original Metropolis by Georgio Moroder in a 1984 rendition of the classic film presaged today's elaborate music videos, something also echoed in the score for Horowitz work. Erotic codes and symbols were a coherent part of Lang's film, as they are in the contemporary art of Oladele Bamgboye. For example, by using Egyptian signs on a computer screen and on light boxes is an attempt by the artists to decontextualise archaic symbols, and set them in new enviroments. For Metropolis Now, Bamgboye uses this concept with found industrial blueprints that belonged to the Anglo American Mining Corporation in South Africa. One theme of Lang's film is particularely relevant in today's ambivalent time. If the question is asked: "What don't you like about the computer age," the answer might likely be: "It has no heart" or "It's dehumanizing."Years before, Lang foresaw the split between the mental and the physical, emotion and mechanization nature and technology, as daunting and problematic future realities. In this sense, Pipilotti Rist and Julia Scher both play with the aspects of political subordinance to mechanical influence. Both artists experiment with notions of the impossible limits of what a perfect human being might be, whether through science, DNA or the endless expanse of the imagination.
Julia Scher's Ameratherm Microwave#1 (The Water Hole), and Ameratherm Microwave#2 (Harmonization) speak about "Artificial Telepathy," also referred to as "microwave hearing." Drs. Joseph Sharp and Allen Frey (contemporary counterparts of professor Rotwang in Metropolis) experimented with microwaves, seeking to transmit spoken words directly into the audio cortex via a pulsed-microwave analog of the speaker's sound vibration. Their work involves the "transmission of specific commands via static or white upsetting other intellectual functions." The influence of the robot-machine ( a sort of female sci-fi warrior in Metropolis) on the human mind is demonstrated by the workers blindly flooding their homes and putting into danger their own children. Pipilotti Rist's Pipilotti's Fehler is a toungue-in-cheek account of childhood memories pointing out her "mistakes" in failing to become a "perfect child" in her society. The comic-like movements, psychedelic colors and repetitive musical score give it the aspect of animation, and add a touch of humour to the seriousness of the subject matter. The children in Metropolis are caught between the evil robot and the angelic counterpart Maria, in the process becoming little robots themselves. What intrigues and fascinates in Lang's Metropolis today are the themes and images, as contemporary as almost a century ago: A vision shaped by the future of technology and science. In Metropolis Now the artists give an up-to-date interpretation of these themes, all the while making sophisticated-though often sceptical use of contemporary technical means.
Elga Wimmer
New York, NY, 2001
Ebru Özseçen's The red architecture Venetian machine boy's dream ornament, presented in a cluster of seven book size digital screens, is decorative and animated with a more edgy erotic energy. During his first visit to New York, Lang was inspired by the futuristics architecture of the place-the Gotham look of which has influenced a number of other cinematographers and artists, including Spielberg in A.I:, with his vision of the New York skyline circa 4000 A.D., nearly totally sunken into the ocean, existing as a relic of a forelorn past. Özseçen Pippin and Frank Scurti in their works, all meld past, present and future realities while trying to adress uncertain global changes in an increasingly fast paced dot.com world where the future is now. In Amnesic Cinema, Scurti depicts a simple mechanical escalator in a Paris subway station. The camera stealthily looks through glass panels, so that passersby appear and dissappear, and become part of an endlessly routine architectural image in constant motion that uncannily recalls the uniform, hypnotized motions of the workers in Metropolis shuffling through the ominous vapors of the machine rooms. The metal bands encircling the monitor of Steven Pippin's Executive Toy recall the strobes of light around the robot Maria's head in Metropolis. In Pippin's work the head is replaced by a screen showing a globe turning counterclockwise, a flat video image of the earth as seen from space. A small figure is seated in front of the monitor, turning around it, a motionless "couch potato,"watching the world on a TV screen. "In investigating the relation of the terrestrial to the universal, of the ideological to the viewfinder itself, Pippin opens up newsatellitic, telescopic, disenchanting-vistas." (Nico Israel, Artforum, Summer 1997) The dispair of humankind, which can be seen throughtout Metropolis, but especially in the uproar of the workers, is also apparent in Slater Bradley's Gargoly. A young woman frozen on the edge of a building wants to escape the limitations of life by attempting suicide (see Maria as robot in Metropolis, killed in the end in flames).The use of the "amateur camera" and the out of focus effect make the whole scene seem intentionally unrealistics and staged. In Body Song, when depicting an apocalyptic vision of a world disappearing into nothingness, Jonathan Horowitz seems to symbiotically pick up on both the flooding of the machine rooms in Metropolis and the mechanically choreographed movements og Lang's robotic world. The music added to the original Metropolis by Georgio Moroder in a 1984 rendition of the classic film presaged today's elaborate music videos, something also echoed in the score for Horowitz work. Erotic codes and symbols were a coherent part of Lang's film, as they are in the contemporary art of Oladele Bamgboye. For example, by using Egyptian signs on a computer screen and on light boxes is an attempt by the artists to decontextualise archaic symbols, and set them in new enviroments. For Metropolis Now, Bamgboye uses this concept with found industrial blueprints that belonged to the Anglo American Mining Corporation in South Africa. One theme of Lang's film is particularely relevant in today's ambivalent time. If the question is asked: "What don't you like about the computer age," the answer might likely be: "It has no heart" or "It's dehumanizing."Years before, Lang foresaw the split between the mental and the physical, emotion and mechanization nature and technology, as daunting and problematic future realities. In this sense, Pipilotti Rist and Julia Scher both play with the aspects of political subordinance to mechanical influence. Both artists experiment with notions of the impossible limits of what a perfect human being might be, whether through science, DNA or the endless expanse of the imagination.
Julia Scher's Ameratherm Microwave#1 (The Water Hole), and Ameratherm Microwave#2 (Harmonization) speak about "Artificial Telepathy," also referred to as "microwave hearing." Drs. Joseph Sharp and Allen Frey (contemporary counterparts of professor Rotwang in Metropolis) experimented with microwaves, seeking to transmit spoken words directly into the audio cortex via a pulsed-microwave analog of the speaker's sound vibration. Their work involves the "transmission of specific commands via static or white upsetting other intellectual functions." The influence of the robot-machine ( a sort of female sci-fi warrior in Metropolis) on the human mind is demonstrated by the workers blindly flooding their homes and putting into danger their own children. Pipilotti Rist's Pipilotti's Fehler is a toungue-in-cheek account of childhood memories pointing out her "mistakes" in failing to become a "perfect child" in her society. The comic-like movements, psychedelic colors and repetitive musical score give it the aspect of animation, and add a touch of humour to the seriousness of the subject matter. The children in Metropolis are caught between the evil robot and the angelic counterpart Maria, in the process becoming little robots themselves. What intrigues and fascinates in Lang's Metropolis today are the themes and images, as contemporary as almost a century ago: A vision shaped by the future of technology and science. In Metropolis Now the artists give an up-to-date interpretation of these themes, all the while making sophisticated-though often sceptical use of contemporary technical means.
Elga Wimmer
New York, NY, 2001
