Cinematic distortion, replica architecture, and speculative taxidermy.

All work by Caspar Stracke.

Clipped from a short documentary on the annual taxidermists convention in Springfield, Illinois, originally produced by Dominique Gradenwitz for German TV Sat 1, re-edited.

The viewer faces a wall of 128 bright illuminated spheres, floating in a virtual space. They can be perceived three-dimensionally. In moments of emitting maximum brightness, the halo of these light sources create visual connections between the spheres similar to bonding oil bubbles in lava-lamps. All of them are in minimal movement like air bubbles, slightly changing shape.

The Kubrick Space is curved. This tape is the attempt to decipher the enigma of Kubrick’s uncanny camera movement through a self contracting space: The rooms and corridors of Shining’s Overlook hotel. This work is also the product of an ill-driven machine of the 70’s. It was created by an old RCA videodisc player that was modified and now mimes a deconstructive editing style. All edit decisions were made by this machine alone. The maker became a mere observer – who just assembled the goodies. Retro-structuralism by accident.

Los Angeles out of Mexico City; London out of New Delhi; Hong Kong out of Istanbul.

Rong Xiang is a work on architectural replicas, piracy and its political consequences. It is a comparison of LeCorbusier’s chapel Notre Dame Du Haut in Ronchamp, France with its exact replica in Zhengzhou, Henan province East China. The work further compares LeCorbusier’s human-scale informed “Modulor” concept with ancient Tao philosophy of Confucius and master builders of the Han dynasty. The Ronchamp replica in Zhengzhou is now a legend – it was short lived, erected in 1994 and demolished in 2006 after a three year lasting dispute with the “Foundation LeCorbusier” in Paris.

This video documents the architecture and life of a new city at its very initiation -Tianducheng, 20 km north of Hangzhou in Eastern China. It is a gated community, built from the ground up, which possesses the style of Parisian architecture, most prominently replicating the Champs Élysées, including a (slightly scaled) copy of the Eiffel Tower.

Kuleshov Sukiyaki is based on the music piece “Systole No 2” from INTERSTICES (2000) by Terre Thaemlitz. It uses this music collage as a grid for the montage of a particular set of found images.

Jim Supanick is a videomaker and writer born in Cleveland, Ohio, and living in Brooklyn. Forthcoming videos include a long-term project titled Seed Sold Back to the Farmer, a two-part animated essay about the assembly line and its legacy of damage, as well as a re-edited segment of Caspar Stracke’s Circle’s Short Circuit (featuring an interview with Avital Ronell). He has received support from NYSCA, the Puffin Foundation, and the Experimental Television Center. His essays on film, video, and visual culture have appeared in such publications as Film Comment, Millennium Film Journal, The Wire, Cineaste, and The Brooklyn Rail, along with exhibition catalogs and with DVD releases. He is the recipient of a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and a NYFA Grant for Nonfiction Literature. He is also a member of Synthhumpers, a quasi-musical collaboration with Josh Solondz. Jim currently teaches at City College of New York.

Caspar Stracke is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker from Germany, living and working in New York City since 1993. His work is situated around architecture and urbanism, media archaeology as well as various social aspects of cinema.His films, videos and installation work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, retrospectives and festivals throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. In 1999 he completed his first feature-length 35mm film project CIRCLE’S SHORT CIRCUIT which toured throughout the US and Europe and was selected for the American Century Part II exhibition at the Whitney Museum, NY. He is an active member of THE THING, a NY-based nexus for art and net culture. Since 2005 he is the co-director of video_dumbo a festival for contemporary video art in NYC, co-presented by the Dumbo Arts Center (dac). Caspar also works as a screen designer, motion graphic designer and editor, collaborating as MOSTRA with his wife, Gabriela Monroy.