Peter Downsbrough

(New Jersey (USA), 1940)

Video: SET [ING], 2003

B/W video, sound
4 min 30sec

          

“SET [ING]”, 2003. Video still. DVD, B/W, sound. 4min 30 sec.

“SET [ING]”, 2003. Video still. DVD, B/W, sound. 4min 30 sec.

“SET [ING]”, 2003. Video still. DVD, B/W, sound. 4min 30 sec.

“SET [ING]”, 2003. Video still. DVD, B/W, sound. 4min 30 sec.

SET [ING] combines the indoor and outdoor space of a city which, when we see the iconic Grande Arche (if not sooner), we recognize as La Défense, Paris. The camera is situated in an empty conference room, through whose glazed front wall the façades of surrounding high-rise office buildings can be seen. Panning horizontally, with a slightly different perspective each time, it captures the interior of the room and the architecture outside. The reflective surface of a conference table provides an optical connection between the interior and exterior, and extends the surfaces and vanishing lines of the architecture in the picture background into the foreground. The cameraʼs movement across the window creates rhythmic interruptions in the continuous skyline that drifts by. The foreground and background,interior and exterior, imaged space and inserted text slide behind and in front of each other like stage backdrops.