[2007] Power Play

Photo-text series in 12 parts (6 pairs)
66 x 56 cm (each)

The radically expanded concept of space, the so-called "spatial turn" found in the cultural and social sciences since the late 1980's, opens new possibilities for a documentary artistic practice, one that responds to the rapidly growing mediatization of our society: If applied to our contemporary concepts of space, one can assume that actual spatial structures and media images overlap, and together create the space we experience. Based on media theories that assume space and media not only determine each other and are mutually dependent, but also cannot be reduced to one or the other, Power Play maps the city of Dallas by setting out the trail of the establishing shots used in the first global TV series in history, the prime time TV drama Dallas (1978 - 1991). Combining photographs that were shot on location, with elements of fictional corporate enterprises, the series aims to draw the attention of the viewer to a space that is both real and imagined.

"Shining high-rise office facades—icons of corporate power—appear and drift across the screen of the TV show Dallas, and a location and feeling is set in the viewer's mind. The remainder of action will most likely occur on a sound stage somewhere near Los Angeles. Left behind are the actuality and symbolism found behind these facades. With the series Power Play, the space behind an image is formed, and a new existence is created for an unused place. These actual corporate environments found adjacent to and behind the establishing shot facades, used in combination with a newly designed graphic identity, appropriate from the televisual fiction a proposed new scenario: how fictions and reality are inherent within both corporate identity, as well as their depictions in the used and unused space of cinematic representation." - Jeff Luckey