Munich … (Installation)

Julian Rosefeldt / Piero Steinle
Munich – The Unknown Cathedrals
1995
Photo installation, panoramic 180° screen
7 slide projectors à 79 b/w photographs,
1 slide projector à 19 text plates, sound
Loop, 44 min


For the photo series Munich – The Unknown Cathedrals (1995), Julian Rosefeldt and his former artist-partner Piero Steinle acted as explorers of fundamental underlying structures, or detectives on the trail of the invisible but powerful. The photos display hidden industrial and post-industrial sites in present-day Munich. Largely unknown to the public and accessible only to their users, these spaces were located by evaluating aerial photographs and, in the case of underground areas, by a detailed functional analysis of the urban fabric. As a counterpart to popular urban emblems and the perfect-looking facades of their hometown, the artists intended to show Munich ‘behind the scenes’. Confronting the tendency nowadays to minimise space, while at the same time using it to the highest possible level of effectiveness, the big empty halls embody an antithesis to actual trends in architecture.

The 180° images, shot in series with a special camera, are projected onto a semi-cylindrical wall in the style of painted nineteenth-century panoramas (ancestors of the cinema). The sense of space is enhanced by the original ambient sound that accompanies the projection and was recorded at the respective sites. A similar work was realised two years later in Paris (see Paris – The Unknown Cathedrals, 1997).

Summarised from Stefan Berg and Katerina Gregos, in: Julian Rosefeldt: Film Works (2008)


Exhibitions / Catalogues

– Julian Rosefeldt – Living in Oblivion, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, May–October 2010 (curated by
   Guido Fassbender, Heinz Stahlhut; catalogue)
– As Catedrais Desconhecidas, Alfândega, Porto, October 1996 (curated by Klaus Schulz)
– München – Die unbekannten Kathedralen, Orangerie, Munich, January 1995 (curated by Julian
   Rosefeldt and Piero Steinle)

Literature

Berg, Stephan, et al., eds. Julian Rosefeldt: Film Works. Ostfildern, 2008.