Urbs Turrita - City of Towers

ALEXANDER HAHN

electronic media artist

URBS TURRITA - CITY OF TOWERS

(1993, installation, computer animations for 3 stripped TV tubes placed on floor or table,

part of the installation cycle The Kircher Itinerary)

In the beginning, there was the word, but images wield superior power. They dig into our memory and shape our ideas. Hahn works with the magic of images. In Urbs Turrita - City of Towers the wood paneled interior with its window view onto two turrets and a flag seems strangely familiar: a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. The wife standing by the window has disappeared; her field of vision has surrendered to that of the audience. The view has also changed, the landscape succumbed to urban development. In the presented interior, there are two TV tubes. Foreign bodies, modern intruders of the 19th century. One of the tubes shows six cuts through a human head, animated in rapid succession. The preserved slices from the 19th century expose the site of memory, yet what can this laboratory preparation of a dead individual tell about the living?

Edith Decker Philips in Rats - Ratten