Gropiusstadt
Pilotprojekt, Gropiusstadt, Berlin, Germany
2007

I had discovered the intimate, garden-living-room feeling of Kreuzberg’s Freiluftkino – the open-air cinema. That shared public, yet simultaneously private experience, had suggested the idea of projecting something on the large living room window, which would act as the screen and be visible to most of the residents of our building. Since we could look onto each other’s little ‘television sets’, I would communicate with my neighbors through this shared medium of the balcony stage. My public intervention would take place in a public space, but at arm’s length and from the comfort of our respective airy cocoons.

I used three of the apartment’s picture windows as frames, like those of a comic strip and made drawings out of light tubes – a white cloud, a blue flying table, a yellow tilting chair – the unstable narrative of home and shelter. Another version of this project would incorporate a coordinated time-delay lighting scheme to create the sensation of several changing, moving images – the slowest animation in the world.