Nini Fiel, Wolfgang Fiel, Shahab Nedaei: Spectre of Modernism

“The Fall … First it was just a battered child, then a row of cells, then a whole tower. The wave of movement spread, selective and sudden, threatening to engulf the whole city in a wave of chaos and horror, unless … But what could she do … now that the elevator ride had turned into a chilling contest with violent death? THE TOWER.” (Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts, London: Academy Editions, 1994, p.32)

Buster Keaton´s cinematographic work apodictically anticipates the post-humanist ecology of things and the resulting evaporation of the teleological horizon of meaning. For the purpose of actualizing the historical antecedent, we express the silhouetted effect of Buster Keaton´s film sets through the model-like interpretation of several peep-boxes, a building typology dating back to the 19th century that has persisted to this day as the principal structural form of the theatrical stage. In contrast to the spatial archetype, the performative activation of our object takes place via the digital interface of modified TFT displays and the screens of a projection. The shadowy outlines of the ghost of Buster Keaton transform the grand narratives of modernity into the wordless comedy of the long now.

Nini Fiel is a writer and architect who co-founded the Institute for cultural policy in Vienna with Wolfgang Fiel in 2017. Wolfgang Fiel is an artist and architect who teaches at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Shahab Nedaei is a media artist working on the synonymy and simultaneity of information on the internet.

Bild: Spectre of Modernism, 2021 © Fiel und Nedaei