The seven large flat-screen panels hung from the ceiling display animated drawings of modernist buildings in an infinite loop of construction and disintegration. Through a labor-intensive animation process , these architectural renderings appear buoyant, suspended in an endless loop of growth and dissolution, like Towers of Babel, simultaneously rising and collapsing .Paradoxically they also possess an inherent tranquility, evoking the cycles of our economy, nature, even life itself .
Time of the Empress was inspired by the artists’ encounter with ruined buildings in Sarajevo and throughout Bosnia that stand as emblems of the 1990s war in the Balkans. The rendered buildings (international-style skyscrapers, inspired by iconic modernist architects) are stripped of specific details, while volume and mass are translated into lines drawn in space. As much as the images evoke the collective memory of the Twin Towers and the endlessly reproduced media footage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, this association was unintentional.
The infinite movement suggests a more positive historical perspective of cyclical decay and renewal. It alludes to the Book of Ecclesiastes: “there is nothing new under the sun” – history repeats itself, empires rise and fall, life is but vanity, and time is fleeting and ephemeral. The title refers to a passage from Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), a fictionalized autobiographical monologue that touches upon every aspect of human existence. All of its complexity, changeability, internal contradictions, and dependence on the whims of the body in which it is contained, imbue this work with symbolic significance. With this in mind, Time of the Empresscasts a meditational glance at the ebbs and flows of history, while also implying the impermanence of the present.
This project is based on Aziz + Cucher’s digital animation-installation Time of the Empress, which was part of a larger show, “Some People”, commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) in 2012 (curator: Lisa D. Freiman). It stands out in the context of their most recent body of works, and can be seen as a link to their earlier videos and digital prints, in which the artists were preoccupied with revealing the intersections between the social, the biological, and the technological.
Aziz + Cucher: Time of the Empress
The Screening Room (TSR), Wynwood Art District, Miami
November 2013 – March 2014
The seven large flat-screen panels hung from the ceiling display animated drawings of modernist buildings in an infinite loop of construction and disintegration. Time of the Empress can be seen as a link to the artists’ earlier videos and digital prints, in which they were preoccupied with revealing the intersections between the social, the biological, and the technological.
The seven large flat-screen panels hung from the ceiling display animated drawings of modernist buildings in an infinite loop of construction and disintegration. Through a labor-intensive animation process , these architectural renderings appear buoyant, suspended in an endless loop of growth and dissolution, like Towers of Babel, simultaneously rising and collapsing .Paradoxically they also possess an inherent tranquility, evoking the cycles of our economy, nature, even life itself .
Time of the Empress was inspired by the artists’ encounter with ruined buildings in Sarajevo and throughout Bosnia that stand as emblems of the 1990s war in the Balkans. The rendered buildings (international-style skyscrapers, inspired by iconic modernist architects) are stripped of specific details, while volume and mass are translated into lines drawn in space. As much as the images evoke the collective memory of the Twin Towers and the endlessly reproduced media footage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, this association was unintentional.
The infinite movement suggests a more positive historical perspective of cyclical decay and renewal. It alludes to the Book of Ecclesiastes: “there is nothing new under the sun” – history repeats itself, empires rise and fall, life is but vanity, and time is fleeting and ephemeral. The title refers to a passage from Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), a fictionalized autobiographical monologue that touches upon every aspect of human existence. All of its complexity, changeability, internal contradictions, and dependence on the whims of the body in which it is contained, imbue this work with symbolic significance. With this in mind, Time of the Empresscasts a meditational glance at the ebbs and flows of history, while also implying the impermanence of the present.
This project is based on Aziz + Cucher’s digital animation-installation Time of the Empress, which was part of a larger show, “Some People”, commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) in 2012 (curator: Lisa D. Freiman). It stands out in the context of their most recent body of works, and can be seen as a link to their earlier videos and digital prints, in which the artists were preoccupied with revealing the intersections between the social, the biological, and the technological.
Aziz + Cucher: Time of the Empress
The Screening Room (TSR), Wynwood Art District, Miami
November 2013 – March 2014
The seven large flat-screen panels hung from the ceiling display animated drawings of modernist buildings in an infinite loop of construction and disintegration. Time of the Empress can be seen as a link to the artists’ earlier videos and digital prints, in which they were preoccupied with revealing the intersections between the social, the biological, and the technological.
