The Airstrip

The Airstrip – Decampment of Modernism, Part III

In the 21st part of his Photography and beyond series, Heinz Emigholz projects as usual a series of structures into our brains and from there on to the screen: Airports, motorways and bus stops; department stores, market halls and warehouses; churches, cathedrals, sculptures and monuments. And a prison, a stadium, an embassy, a semi-detached house. These far-flung architectural works generate a frame story: The ephemeral, capitalistic, religiously melancholy and moralising world gets caught up in its own sense of purpose with far reaching consequences. Even after the atom bomb is dropped, as narrated by a vaguely familiar voice, the viewer waits for the documentary framing of an architectural design. Yet this frame does not exist, perhaps it never even did. What we have before us is a flat screen, with the illustrations from advertising circulars floating across the image as proof. Front and back merge to form the actual spatial and temporal construction, whose architect is none other than the viewers themselves.

As the final part of the series, "Airstrip" offers no big finale of architectural film history, but rather a brilliant desert landscape full of unexpected new beginnings.

Source: 64. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)