May 24, 6.30 pm
Sasha Pirker
The future will not be Capitalist
A 2010, 35mm, 20min
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In the late 1960s, back when there was still a future, Oscar Niemeyer designed the French Communist Party headquarters in Paris. Sasha Pirker’s film explores how this building with its futuristic qualities relates to the coeval political projects, economic realities and aesthetic attitudes. The cinematic means are selected for their capacity to offer various options for examining an extraordinary building such as this one—as physical space, as institution or as historical document—and hence to question its aesthetic impact, practical use and significance as political symbol.
It may be true that buildings tell stories, but «The Future will not be capitalist» is interested more in the various points of view and interpretational frameworks within which architecture is lent different voices. Sasha Pirker’s film thus switches back and forth between sober glimpses of the workaday life of the staff at party headquarters and shots referencing the organic abstract formal vocabulary and concrete material idiom of Niemeyer’s edifice. As we follow the path of the hand-held camera through the building, we see the same rooms by turns as a functional working environment and then —especially when deserted—as arresting examples of modernist creative power. Pirker’s film cannot deny the fascination of form, nor does not intend to—it merely brings a healthy dose of skepticism to its celebratory depiction.
That such reflections on the significance of the means of representation used to produce a film are no mere exercise in artistic self-localization, but rather take their cue from the reality of divergent perspectives on Niemeyer’s party building is evident from the off-stage narrator’s voice, whose French-accented English with its even, «neutral» intonation, forms a key stylistic device of the film. From the custodian of the party headquarters, whose commentary and recollections lead us through the building, we learn for example that the administration categorically refuses all requests to use the building as backdrop for advertising films. «We do not want to market the building,» is the clear position taken by the Communist Party, whose better days are now decades past. This statement expresses an insistently anti-Capitalist stance that is however contradicted by the current leasing of two floors of the headquarters along with the cafeteria, necessitated by financial difficulties.
«The Future will not be capitalist,» a quote from the custodian of the building, which was recently granted protection as a historical monument, is a nice title, because it lets hope live on. But the good old stories of the links between left-wing politics and forward-looking architecture, of Niemeyer, who waived his fee for his Communist comrades in France and in return was able to flee the dictatorship in Brazil, stem from bygone times, back when people could still compare the spherical architecture of the domed underground hall with the belly of a pregnant woman and interpret it as a (political) fertility symbol. «The Future …» does not however choose the most obvious option, taking a nostalgic look back at a future that has already been historicized, but is more concerned with present-day efforts by those who want to deal pragmatically with an extraordinary piece of architectural heritage—while still pursuing political goals that go beyond pure self-preservation of a shrunken Party whose grandiose headquarters continually remind it of its idealized self-image.
Sasha Pirker, born 1969 in Vienna, studied linguistics, lives in Wien. Since 2010 she teaches as Senior Artist in the class for Video and Videoinstallation/ Prof. Dorit Margreiter, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Between 1995 and 2000 she worked as a curator of contemporary architecture at Architekturzentrum Vienna.
Films: «The Face – Storefront for Art and Architecture NYC», A/USA 2011, 16mm transferred to Video, col, no sound, 09:00 min., Installation; «Cornelius Kolig. Anleitungen an die Ewigkeit oder/or Don’t Fuck with Paradise», A 2011, HDV, col., 15:00 min., german OV; «The Portrait of the Painter», A 2010, 03:41 min., Video-Installation; «The Future will not be Capitalist«, A/F 2010, 35mm, col., 19:24 min.; «Carl Appel, Wohnhochhaus», A 2009, DV, col., 02:10 min.; «Once at Miracle Mile», A/USA 2009, DV, col., 09:10 min.; «Angelica Fuentes, The Schindler House», A/USA 2008, DV, col., 10:16 min.; «Life is beautiful», A, 2008, Super 8, col, 1 min.; «John Lautner, The Desert Hot Springs Motel», A/USA 2007, DV, col., 10:34 min.; «Schwarz auf Grün», A, 2006, BetaCam, col, 103:00 min., Video-Installation.
Most recent filmfestivals und screenings: Architekturfilmtage, Filmmuseum Munich/D; Diagonale, Graz/A; IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam/NL (all 2011); 2010 Goethe-Institut Lille/F; VIENNALE - Vienna International Film Festival/A; 67th Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica, Film Festival Venice/I; Rencontres Internationales, Haus der Kulturen, Berlin/D; Architekturfilmtage, Filmmuseum Munich/D; Diagonale, Graz/A; Rencontres Internationales, Reina Sofia, Madrid/E (all 2010); Rencontres Internationales, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris /F; VIENNALE – Vienna International Film Festival/A (all 2009).
› We further screen Sasha Pirker’s film: «John Lautner, The Desert Hot Springs Motel», A/USA 2007, DV, col., 10:34
Afterwards: Sasha Pirker in conversation with Madeleine Bernstorff
Madeleine Bernstorff born 1956 in Munich. Works as film curator, Super8 filmmaker, researcher. Teaches at art academies and universities in Berlin, Braunschweig, Vienna and elsewhere. Solo and group projects in changing constellations.