Filming about architecture

[imomus]

Last night -- just as I was being driven to the airport to fly back to Berlin, unfortunately -- was the Vienna premiere of the new film by Heinz Emigholz, Loos Ornamental.

Emigholz -- who teaches at the Berlin art school -- makes documentaries about architects which just show their buildings, in order of construction, as they are today, with no commentary whatsoever, but with immaculately-captured field recordings of their ambient sound. I've written about him before here on Click Opera, covering his films about Schindler and Goff. He's also made films about Sullivan, Maillart and Kiesler, and plans films about Luis Barragán in Mexico, Auguste Perret in France and Algeria, Pier Luigi Nervi in Italy and Ulrich Müther in Germany.

I look forward to Emigholz's architectural films more than anyone else's. They're quiet and simple, but they pack more atmosphere, beauty and interest than anything. We see places, we hear sounds, we sense the lives lived in the buildings as well as the lives of their makers.

As Emigholz puts it: “Architecture projects space into this world. Cinema photography translates that space into pictures projected in time. Cinema then is used in a completely new way: as a space to meditate on buildings.” It's a meditation I've come to love, a new, quiet cinema, ambient cinema, spiritual cinema. It's also what I responded to in Hermann Huber's video of Cairo's Tiring Building, and I spent time with Huber in Vienna this week, and will write something for his forthcoming book about the Tiring Building, whose Viennese counterpart I also saw this week.



To see Emigholz's film about Loos, the Vienna architect and critic who famously declared ornament "crime" at the start of the Modernist period (and who therefore progressively simplified it in his buildings) in Vienna would have been perfect. Alas, I had to rush to the airport. But I did manage to soak up some Loos this trip in the shape of the mock-up Loos room in the Vienna Museum.



There was a catch: right now, the Loos room is full of snow. Designer Robert Stadler has made an "intervention" which turns the heavy, cosy, dark space into a snow globe full of suspended polystyrene snowflakes, drawing attention to "the bizarre freezing of a living environment". That's something nobody could accuse Heinz Emigholz of doing.

Comments

the nowness of now

[(Anonymous)]

..hang on Nick!!..I'm still composing my pithy review of JoeMus....

maf

Re: the nowness of now

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll keep checking back to the Joemus reviews entry! (http://imomus.livejournal.com/415501.html)

[ciao-ragazzi.livejournal.com]

have you been to the loos american bar off karntner strasse? It's very crowded at night but a fantastic place to have a quiet drink during the day. The only bar I've visited with its floorplan printed on the drinks menu.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen that, no.

[iconoclastastic.livejournal.com]

That Emigholz film sounds interesting, in a maybe sorta Jon Jost kind of way.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd like to see the house Wittgenstein designed:

http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&q=wittgenstein+house&btnG=Search+Images

[(Anonymous)]

Have you actually managed to watch Schindler's Houses then?

-r

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes!

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

I can't buy your album anywhere, Momus. I am so sick of record stores, whenever I go in to ask for something or buy anything, all they do is ask me questions about it, because they don't know wth it is.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Darla (http://www.darla.com) can help you.

[(Anonymous)]

Apparently Morrissey has bought the Kings Rd house, just kidding. Have you seen Garbage Warrior, if not you should.

[grzeg.livejournal.com]

Adolf Loos’ “Ornament and Crime” does state that ornamentation is crucial to certain cultures; however, in “our society” it is irrelevant and criminally wasteful, and rather would have the question of material ornament dismissed entirely. Beatriz Colomina’s “Interior” however does a shocking alternative-historical exposé on Loos’ architecture as seen in sumptuous dichotic terms (House for Josephine Baker; subject/object, male/female, spectacle/voyeur, and “interior”/”exterior” [nudge, nudge]), even “ornamental” through his rich use of material, as shown through COLOR photographs, something that the Adolf Loos conservatory strictly tries to control, to keep up the virtuous materially-stoic, black-and-white mystic of his works’ old documentation.

thanks

[(Anonymous)]

this is not a post pertaining to todays topic,just a wee appreciative scribble.
i have been reading your blogs for years and have found almost every one culturally enriching and informative.i first heard of "you tube" for eg through click opera along with architectural insights, musical(by and large left field progressive)marvelousness etc etc.
i am not one given to sycophancy but in this instance deference seems apt.
your albums are all amazing apart from the one with summer holiday 1999 0n, witch in my opinion suffers from being a bit to of its time(acid dancey).the new stuff esp the "o"trilogy i find astounding (i get joemus next week)
the stereo gig in glasgow is my fav gig ever esp the bit with the polythene and the devil dance/run.your hair looked good too.!
anyway just thought id say this

Re: thanks

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to remember how I first heard of YouTube myself, and I can't! What was the first video I watched? No idea. It's only been a couple of years, and yet it seems impossible to remember a time before Web 2.0. Which is a bit scary!

Thanks for the note!