No Damage (2002)
13 min. | DV | color | stereo |

NO DAMAGE is a composition made out of fragments from over 80 different feature and documentary films that show the architecture of New York City. The work investigates a number of cinematic clichéss of architectural presence captured on film. The failure of the camera eye to grasp these high risen structures in its entireness produces distorded views, such as steep camera angles, fish eye distortion and fast zooms and pans.
Especially when lifted out of its original context, these scenes reveal their emotional implications: grandeur, glamour, the wake of modernism during the 60s, post-modernism (Eighties and Nineties) but also menace, superiority and anonymity. In-between these extreme positions emerges a new form sentimentalism that is funneled by the tragic events of September 11.

A number of particular clips that resonates such emotions are juxtaposed with each other, establishing a dialogue, a non-verbal discourse on age, status, functionality and aesthetics.
The feeling of eternity that these giant structures seem to promise, have now changed into a consciousness of their finitude.

One of the most important messages of this work is a call to establish a new relationship with the rapid changing landscape of urban environments. The questioning and investigation of architectural damage establishes an antidote to emotional reaction on absence.

With this mind set a new awareness for urban architecture has emerged. People might see their surounding buildings as life forms that they watch every day. Their coming of age shows in cosmetic surgery and reparations, and finally a -possible- demolition or destruction. Buildings disappear for different reasons. They pulverize, the particles move, constant damage causes constant transformation. Only in an elapsed time view this tragic transformations appear like a insignificantfriction within Manhattan's architectural mass, that moves ahead - like a glacier.