the city re-imagined

city montage – origins and transformations

montage extracted from its origins in modern engineering and construction is propelled as part of the artist’s technical apparatus to re-imagine the city in crisis. dublin, paris, berlin and moscow become the spatial origins of montage, the fragmented city gives rise to the the technique of the fragment. the unbridled development of technology drives the contradictory nature of the capitalist city.

the potential it represents remaining largely unfulfilled. technique is forced to make its most significant advances in the artistic realm. art becomes the avant guarde of technique and points our apperception to a world to be reconfigued. the constructive principle of montage treats the unreconciled fragments of the city not as a seamless whole -it ephasizes the distinctive nature of its parts, its contradictions, the disruptions, the gaps and silences; all of which explodes the received social meanings of things.

this dialectic of contradictory elements prepares the imagination for the potential of other futures.  

“Paris Exposition: Eiffel Tower and Celestial Globe, Paris, France, 1900”, 1900. Lantern slide 3.25x4in, 3.25 x 4 in. Brooklyn Museum, Goodyear. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum.)