Slow Space

by Klaus W. Eisenlohr

At first glimpse there is almost no public space in the city. Space, architectural space is always private and has limited access. The filmaker has to learn this as soon as he takes out a professional looking camera. On the other hand, every private space is a public space to a certain extent. The filmmaker, therefore has to find his role that will open the social or architectural space he wants to photograph in. It's here where the game starts.

Slow Space
a film and art project by fellow curator at the Directors Lounge, Klaus W. Eisenlohr, will be shown at the Bauhaus Kolleg -open space- in Dessau, monday 22th, 7 pm

Slow Space takes the viewer on a visual trip through places of glass architecture in Chicago. Filmed entirely within the urban constructed environment that makes up this contemporary North American city, Slow Space is a visually arresting investigation into how space is described, defined and ultimately experienced. Berlin filmmaker Klaus W. Eisenlohr commutes this relationship with the outside ‘world’ via an array of constructed transparencies in the glass domes and atriums that formed so much of architecture’s modernist preoccupation for a constructed inside/outside dialectic. Descriptions and ultimately opinions on the status of public space in Chicago form part of the film’s identity via a series of interviews conducted from the participant’s private domains. Street scenes with performers complement this film essay. With his project in Chicago, the artist Klaus W. Eisenlohr has investigated the relationship between the body and the urban architectural environment over the time period of three years.

Filmed entirely within the urban constructed environment that makes up the contemporary North American city of Chicago, Slow Space is a visually arresting investigation into how space is described, defined and ultimately experienced. Berlin filmmaker Klaus W. Eisenlohr commutes this relationship with the outside 'world' via an array of constructed transparencies in the glass domes and atriums that formed so much of architecture's modernist preoccupation for a constructed inside/outside dialectic. Descriptions and ultimately opinions on the status of public space in Chicago form part of the film's identity via a series of interviews conducted from the participant's private domains. Looking out and sealed behind the glass of their window panes a number of Chicagoans talk about their own experiences on the private/public borders of contemporary urbanity.
Slow Space is a film of many photographs if one considers it's over 3000 edits. Each frame in this 67 minute film it seems has been invested with a quality of aesthetic authorship normally attributed to the production of single images. Employing a staggering depth of compositional artistry Klaus W. Eisenlohr has enabled a joint optic relationship to come into view between maker and film spectator returning the film experience to an almost first time phenomenological encounter. I am, after seeing the film, reminded of my capacity to see, absorb and recognize spaces as images and spaces imagined simultaneously, i.e. to be totally stimulated with my senses activated to the fields of vision being presented. Seeing this film, it becomes apparent how visually stimulating the film experience can be.
Ben Anderson

related: Slow Space and Slow Space at TIE

Bauhaus Kolleg
-open space-
Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Gropiusallee 38
06846 Dessau

monday 22th, 7 pm

all welcome!