spatial experience narrative and architecture - Architecture Insights

SPATIAL EXPERIENCE, NARRATIVE & ARCHITECTURE - BYERA HADLEY REPORT 153.0 PRACTITIONERS OF THE IN-BETWEENBerlin based artists Nina Fischer and Maroanel Sani focus on transitory spaces and vacuumsituations in urban environments, collective memoryand vision in various media such as film, video,installation and photography. 17 They use their workto discuss the relationship between buildings andtheir psychological effect. The films by these twoartists are frequently concerned with visualisingurban architectural settings in order to address theparameters of a discourse on space that has shapedthe 20th century. In the installation work ‘The Rise’they explore “the complex relationship betweenthe visual language of a building, its psychologicaleffects and the political-economic reality in which itfunctions.” 18This work examines the architectural reality of aneighbourhood in Amsterdam undergoing radicalchange. In conversation with the artists, they referredto the work of Anthony Vidler ‘The ArchitecturalUncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely’. Byrepeatedly using cinema to approach architecturalspaces of particular significance, they constantlyraise questions about the production of meaning inthat place. 19 There are many films also that are basedon this effect, like Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and alsorecent films that play in the modern environment ofempty office cities by night. The house, which usuallyshould be shelter, often becomes a frightening place,like a prison.PICTURED‘The Rise’Film stillsHD / 35 mm, 16:9,17 min.,loop,colour,Dolby Digital, 2007Image source:http://fischerelsani.net/