[2003] Miami (Adams Hotel)

Wood construction, paint, rear-projection transparency, projection mirror, light spots
Dimensions variable (approx. 415 x 240 x 230 cm)

Miami (Adams Hotel) deals with strategies involved in the use of architectural images and their allocation within Hollywood-level film productions. Interiors in film are often used as quick visual reference material to tell the viewer not only all they need to know about the character and the context of what is taking place, but also to attach the story to a specific geographic location. Usually it is a constant repetition of the same—a shifting of stereotyped images that often have no actual connection with real places, yet nonetheless a high recognition value, thanks to media clichés.

Miami (Adams Hotel) shows a view of an interior of a typical, run-down Art Deco hotel in Miami Beach, the Adams Hotel. However, it is not a documentary photo of the hotel but a digitally manipulated interior pulled from a Hollywood film, where all actors and details have been removed.

"[...] Anything that might bear reference to a uniqueness of a place or time has been extracted from these images. They are what they are; no more, no less—in the end that is what makes up their artificiality. These pictures know of nothing that could cause a delay, not even the rough surface, which could abrade their movement and provide resistance. An irreducible, primordial cliché surfaces beneath all the clichéd images. Nothing less than an analytical process stands out at the heart of the work. Robbed of all resistance, which would refer them to the particularity of a place or time, the images pass into a kind of sightlessness, out-of-sight-ness or invisibleness, which corresponds to the movement of their flight and moreover to their escalating speeds. [...]" - Hans-Joachim Lenger