Installation

Client: Akademie der Künste, Berlin

Dates: March 2021

Category: Animation / Drawing

Format: video projection H.264 format, 1200 x 1176 pixels, 3 minutes 15 seconds

„Being on residency in Berlin at the beginning of 2021, in the middle of the woods (yet in the middle of the city) was an odd experience. We were living, on lockdown, at the Akademie der Künste, working downstairs in the atelier and sleeping in the bedroom above. At times, it felt as if we might be the only people there. In response to this, and in acknowledgment of what would have been the 100th birthday of the architect who designed our temporary home, we decided to draw the spaces of the atelier, as well as our lives within it. In support of the practice of open studios, even in Covid-times, we projected the finished axonometric survey drawing onto the studio window, creating a 3m x 3m glowing box within which the drawing, now animated, draws and undraws itself, the active drawing signalling the act of drawing going on within. The installation lit only one window on the third floor of Werner Duttmann’s Blue Building at night, signalling to passers-by that we were, in fact, still there.“ 

This installation investigates the edges of drawing. In particular, it is a study of movement through line and the animation of space through the direct projection of 2-dimensional, animated drawing onto/into 3-dimensional space. In its original location in the Tiergarten Park in Berlin, the window projection sought to dissolve the barrier between the outside world and the studio within, using drawing as a signal of occupancy. 

The installation begins with a blank screen, whereupon a line begins to grow, drawing first the space of the atelier where the work was made, then the furniture and fixings, and finally the everyday possessions of the artists in their temporaray home. The drawing then unravels until only a blank screen is left.