exhibition and film design

The Hospital
Trade-Fair Palace, Convent of St. Agnes of Bohemia and Kinsky Palace, Prague
June 2005
music: Anna Meredith ‘fly-by-night’

description

The Hospital is a film that charts the construction of the new University Hospital on Tottenham Court Road in London over 3 years from 2001. Every day one second of film was shot from a vantage point over-looking the building site as the hospital grew from foundations to the fixing of the external cladding. The film was shot as a combination of single frames and continuous shots in super 8mm film that was later transferred to digital for editing. The final film combines this footage with still photography and black and white super 8mm film from within the concrete frame, when the outer walls were incomplete.

The set-up of the installation plays with how the viewer watches the film, sometimes becoming the same scale as the building and at other times, viewing it from the outside. At the same time other people watching the film may cast their shadow over the screen, and appear as if they are in the space of the film. This also plays with both real time and manipulated speeds, creating a new fictive space. The use of super 8mm film provides a medium that is full of imperfections and life, that contrasts with the high definition and precise black and white photography. When the two films are juxtaposed together, as in the final installation, there seems to be a fragility to the building as it grows in this format.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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