[2002] Night Sets

Echo Park, DV, 2 minute loop, color / silent
Paradise Road, DV, 54 second loop, color / silent
835 North Kings Road, DV, 45 second loop, color / silent

Descriptions of space in film and television productions play an important role on our construction of realities. Cinema transforms real locations into their fictional representations, but it also contributes to the realization of imaginary spaces. The series of short videos arose from the experience of the ubiquity of the faux locations of this "most photographed and least remembered city in the world" (Norman Klein), where the boundaries between fact and fiction become increasingly blurry—with the effect that fictional places can sometimes appear equal to, or even more real than reality itself. In nightly drives, cinematic memories are inevitably projected on to the physical places experienced. The artificial, low-key evening light turned the generic, everyday locations into mysterious stage sets, charged with Hollywood-designed melodrama.

Based on media theories that assume space and media not only determine each other, but also cannot be reduced to one or the other, the videos of the series depict these locations by night in one single shot. Referencing Hollywood crime dramas, especially neo-noir films from the 1980s, these shots were superimposed in a digital post-production process with silent animations that follow the film industry's patterns of use in triggering suspense: A mysterious meeting in a nightly parking lot, an old dark house beneath the trees, with the flickering light of an active television set, or the modern, empty villa with a flaring indoor fire place and fluttering curtain of an open terrace door.

" [...] we can refer to Nimmerfall's videos as a heavy dose of the pure stuff for film junkies. They are like a straight shot poured from the distilled essence of the substance that makes it so marvelous to watch movies [...] The film that follows is brought to you by the artist, even if you have to make it yourself." - Stella Rollig