URBAN SUBJECTS
SABINE BITTER | HELMUT WEBER

Making Ruins I, II

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"Making Ruins" Exhibition view, "What is left" frei_raum Q21 MuseumsQuartier Vienna,
September 23 – November 20, 2016. Foto: Suchart Wannaset

The multi-part photographic installation Making Ruins, 2016, consists of
a black and white wallpaper of a city view of Macedonian capital city of Skopje. The large scale image is combined with a series of four framed urban details – “Making Ruins #1 – #4” which relate to the city´s current situation and its urban restructuring. Photographic fragments of architectures by Kenzo Tange and Janko Konstantinov, are mounted on various sized eternit-panels and placed in the exhibition space.
The photographs of the last remains of Tange´s and Konstantinov´s buildings point to the corpses of architecture hidden away under a foamy camouflage of a thick layer of fictitious history. The artistic intervention reworks the still visible architectural remains into ruins, acting to interrupt the linearity of false historization of the architectural fabric of the city, preserving memories of a particular moment of past international solidarity and claiming an alternative future for Skopje.