“Mobile Cinema” is a gesamtkunstwerk, a synthesis of video
installations of public places in several cities (Berlin, Istanbul,
Hamburg, Munich) and installations in art spaces.
A “Mobile Cinema,” installed onto the cover of the “Homesick
Handbag,” is carried around by the artist through a city. This plays
a video made in one city, e.g. Munich, while the artist is walking
around with it in another city, e.g. Istanbul. Simultaneously the
artist videos the visited city with its specific urban structures, and
the reaction of the public to the mobile installation is documented
as well. This material is used for new videos to be shown in the
next cities, along with the videos of the previously visited cities.
The result is the “Stadtkörperserie” (‘City Structure’ series). These
European cities are thus linked together by the system of action
and reaction and form a single, huge urban “all-over,” where impersonal,
abstract city structures and private experiences melt
into one another to form a visual unity. The pedestrian becomes a
“star for a second” in his or her city, and the particular local color
of this city is encountered directly and unfiltered by pedestrians
in the next city. The preserved time of the video is interwoven with
the present time of the city being visited. The narrated urban
situation is inserted in the real urban situation. Material and
immaterial time levels overlie each other.
The extended movement of walking is contrasted with the momentary
stay in places with particular significance for the artist and
others. From a bird’s eye view the walks sketch a net of lines and
points and create a kind of walked drawing on the image of the
city. The artistic work in exterior public places is translated into an
interior archival installation. While this “Mobile Cinema” stands
for the direct, unfiltered momentary event, the “Homesick Box”
presents short, static pieces of a continually developing process.
“Mobile Cinema” is the visualization of the feeling of urban space
and mobility. Every city has its own feeling of mobility. A city’s
marketing generally emphasizes a particular mobility. In Munich
you walk or you go by bike. In Istanbul you go by car or bus and
get stuck in traffic. Rome is famous for its Vespafeeling, New York
for its subway, and Los Angeles is the city of cars. The clichés need
to be confirmed and put into perspective by mobility maps.
Though the artist often goes to places of technological transportation,
she chooses to walk so that her body gets directly in contact with
the stone structure of the city. The most archaic form of getting
about for city people is walking. In the city, with its emphasis on
the greatest possible speed in mobility, walking, the original form
of human mobility, seems quite old-fashioned. But walking creates
a personal range, a sounding out of public space. The “Homesick
Handbag” is an instrument for examining this actual space, along
with the various social structures – political, juristic, economic and
such – that have created it and continue to influence it. Public
space is not an “open” space that its residents can take over; it is
on the contrary the most-defined and most-controlled space of
their reality. Each public space is created out of its particular
national, traditional, and sociological contexts. However, because
these spaces exhibit similarities in their urban situations and
requirements, comparisons between the various cities are possible.
The “Mobile Cinema” with its “Homesick Handbag” and the
“Homesick Box” creates a transcultural urban network by the lack
of the familiar, by the nostalgia for a concrete, personal, intimate,
and uniquely defined place.
The place of longing varies according to the individual. Any one
place will be differently perceived and remembered depending
on personal background and the comparison one will make with
the places already existing in one’s mind. Everybody creates his
or her own biographical city map, just as everybody carries her
(or his) own handbag.
The handbag, formerly a means of carrying things so as to have
the hands free, has long become a status symbol in the city.
The handbag, a purely optical, wordless communication medium,
turns its owner into its mute bearer, all the while conveying the
bearer’s self-image.
