Zone C
9 C-Prints, 21x21 cm, 2008
“Life always has the last word,” says Le Corbusier in Le Modulor,
providing a key to interpreting his work: a standardized architecture, far
from any aesthetic pleasure, which avoids ornaments and decoration but is
in perfect harmony with the actions and requirements of the human body.
It was by following the Swiss architect’s advice to “design
houses in series” that the first apartment buildings of the Parisian
banlieus were constructed: spacious, luminous, built near major industrial
centers and far from the city. Over time, however, all the intentions for
integration and social wellbeing linked to the birth of new neighborhoods
plummeted and, with them, the buildings and their inhabitants sank into
an abyss of misery, marginalization, lack of prospects, racism and political
vacuum. Zone C describes violence, disorientation and disillusionment. It
tells of men and women trapped by time and space, of a dystopian, unwanted
and undesirable society that, with its disharmony, assumes almost catastrophic
dimensions. But when describing the ruins of abandonment, urban segregation,
the general condition of housing and social exclusion of the Parisian banlieus,
Niklas Goldbach—who normally focuses his work on the contradictions
between the public and the private as well as on the environment and public
spaces—does it discreetly, in an almost imperceptible way. The almost
invisible touch, with which the nine buildings of the banlieus are described,
will inevitably require reflection. It forces the viewers to get closer,
to squeeze their eyes, to focus attention on the delicate, almost Flemish-like,
design, so that the deafening silence of the cement suburbs, their degradation
and the indigence of the inhabitants—who have no possibility of social
rehabilitation—remain in our minds.
Sarah Galmuzzi, 2008
Niklas
Goldbach studied photography at the University of Bielefeld
and 'Experimental Media Arts' at the University of the Arts Berlin where he
graduated with honours in 2004. In 2005 he majored in the MFA program 'Integrated
Media Arts' at Hunter College, City University of New York and postgraduated
with a "Meisterschüler" degree of the University of the Arts
Berlin. In 2005 Niklas Goldbach received a Fulbright sholarship. From 2007-2008
he was participant of the artist in residency program of the "Palais
de Tokyo", Paris, and in 2010 he received a grant from "Stiftung
Kunstfonds Bonn".
Since 2002 his work has been presented throughout Europe, the United States
and Asia in numerous film festivals, group-exhibitions and solo shows.
"In Habitat", his first show in Sweden, will feauture two works which have never been shown together: the video installation "Habitat C3B" and the C-print series "ZONE C". Both works have been produced during his stay in the 'Palais de Tokyo' in Paris, 2008 and focus on social housing projects. The third work, an installation, was made specifically for the exhibition at Galleri Maskinen.
HABITAT C3B
Video Loop, 7:37 min, HD Video, Stereo, 2008
With: Daniel Reuter
Foley Artist: Martin Langenbach
Sound Design: Christian Obermaier
"HABITAT
C3B" was filmed in 2008 in the district of 'Front de Seine' (also known
as Beaugrenelle) in the 15th arrondissement right at the South of the Eiffel
Tower. The district, built in the 1970s, is a result of Georges Pompidou's
attempt to modernize the city. It includes about 20 towers reaching nearly
100 meters of height built all around an elevated espalanade paved with frescos
that can only be perceived from the elevated floors of the towers. Largely
fallen into disrepair, the City of Paris has launched a major project to renovate
'Front de Seine'.
"During his
stay in the 'Pavillon, Laboratoire de création de Palais de Tokyo',
Niklas Goldbach concentrated on the transit spaces of Paris. In “HABITAT
C3B”, his characters are trapped in a public space, behaving like animals
out of a cage. In front of these large long takes where the only movement
is the one of the body, the spectator wonders about the place and role of
these strange living creatures: are they here to control us like militias,
or, on the contrary, are they controlled beings, the reflects of an entirely
standardized society? Niklas Goldbach immerses us into his questionings, but
never tries to solve them: nothing matters but the action that is occurring
in front of our eyes.”
Ange Leccia, director of the Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
"In Niklas
Goldbach's HABITAT C3B, the urban topology is visualised as a complex labyrinth
of structures and forms, quasi lifeless, cold and barren in spite of the vegetation
- a landscape like out of a science fiction movie, familiar yet strange. It
is inhabited by restless characters resembling cloned office clekrs, trapped
in a space, in a loop-like nightmare. The spectator is left wondering about
the topology, the role of the creatures. The images evoke questions about
standardisation and control (Who controls and who is being controlled ?),
about form and reason, about the emotional impact of urban topology on society
and it's interaction with the life forms inhabiting it."
Pierre Wolter & Melanie Zagrean, "Stadt am Rande" Exhibition
Catalogue
"Themes of conceptual repetition and displacement are central to the
video work of Niklas Goldbach. The phenomenal context frames the disorienting
effect set up by a story that has no beginning or end. In Habitat C3B we find
a phenomenological non-narrative that presents itself as sequential repetitive
events of both actions and participant, and whose meaning and comprehension
is left largely to the viewer. In a world that is now overwhelmingly mediated
by images the videos of Goldbach present a sense of fragmented punctum, a
partial sensory poignancy that becomes a self fulfilling end in itself. Today
we increasingly build our picture of the world (habitat) from the part-narrative
of purely sensory experiences such as these."
Mark Gisbourne
