BLUEPRINTS IN MOTION

The structure of the video consists of a single vertical shot, which pans with the same pace
downwards and then upwards again, while changing perspective and scale and portraying simultaneously
a residential urban area and a group of people. The scene takes place on the border of a construction site,
which is not visible in the video but is indicated by the non-diegetic sound in the piece.
The people in the scene are watching the ongoing building works, commenting on them or just observing.

The title of the video Blueprints in Motion is a fragment of Dziga Vertov's text 'WE: Variant of a Manifesto',
published in 1922 in Moscow. The text is an example of the positivist belief in the future and in technological
progress as a means to liberate and equate the people. Machines, constructions and technologies are seen as
a superior extension of people's bodies. The camera perceives more than the eye.
The exhibited video presents a different reality. The modernist belief in progress has failed and most
of the communist ideals seem to have disappeared. Large-scale decisions, speculation and extensive construction
projects are planned and executed without involving the actual inhabitants of the area. They are reduced to mere
spectators and bystanders of a spectacle transforming their surroundings.
Blueprints in Motion contains parallel times within the same frame, the rationalized economical time of the construction,
the expanded time of the spectators and the time of the actual camera movement.
Produced in collaboration with Alexandra Navratil