Description: A Building Explains Itself is a single channel video that uses fire exit diagrams as an aesthetic vehicle for imagining how the depicted building might conceive of it's inhabitants. It follows a single figure trailing a red line as it travels along the multiple possible routes to the building's exit, separating and recombining as the routes diverge and reconnect. Luciano Berio's Linea (as performed by Queens-based ensemble Yarn/Wire) functions as both score and structural inspiration for the figure's behavior and movement, it's fracturing and cohering melodies alternately driving and echoing the figure's progression.
The piece is a visual rumination on the limitations and inadequacies of design. The imagined perspective of the building is not anthropomorphic, but rather a fragmented collection of passageways and portals, shown in a series of static, surveillance-like images, that bear the marks of multiple, competing visions: architect, client, engineer, inhabitant. Irregular stairwells, fantastical details, monotonous hallways, obfuscated views, and odd repetitions abound, all of which combine to make the space appear hermetically sealed off from the environment outside. The buildings details – from the exaggerated doors and glass walls to the exit plans and wall text – are clean and efficient, nearly sterile. The figure is an extension and embodiment of this design: it functions like a maquette, its demeanor stolid and its movements programmatic. Ultimately, the limit of the figure’s path conforms to the scope of the building’s design.