[2009–2010] The Glass House

Two architectural models from painted MDF and transparent film on acrylic-glass, rear-projection video, wooden table construction, poster
207 x 96 x 127 cm and 220 x 96 x 126 cm

The Glass House forms an investigation around architecture and social imagery, its stereotypes and strategies of use found within mass media, and its narrative structures. The project is based on the phenomenon of the negative association of modern architecture not only in Hollywood films, but also in our society–which stands oddly in complete opposition to the ideas that the pioneers of modern architecture envisioned. The Glass House—its title a reference to the first film studios, which were constructed as glass houses, and to the "glass house" as synonym of modern architecture—takes this as starting point for two architectural models that combine images of modern and contemporary architecture, and serve as psychological backdrop for vacant morality and bad character throughout film history. The construction of the models does not follow documentary recordings and blue prints of the buildings, but rather mediated, "collective" memories, and as such are collages of spatial descriptions found within the films.

"[...] The components of The Glass House—posters, architectural models, and a spatial installation—are visual montages that draw on the collective-consciousness inventory of Hollywood's image machinery. In image/text, model/image, installation/projection, the artist realizes her theme in different media-related explorative forms. The montage effect once recognized by Sergei Eisenstein in the successive shots of a film is here transferred from cinema into artistic space. Yet it does not manifest in the same way as in the film's time-space continuum. Instead, it shares a space continuum with the architectural model and a time continuum with the physical experience of the spatial installation. [...]" - Doris Berger