6 1/2 weeks - Bahar Noorizadeh. The Red City of the Planet of Capitalism

Bahar Noorizadeh's long-standing research interest in the history and development of urban planning finds expression in the virtual world of The Red City of the Planet of Capitalism. In the two videos of the multimedia installation, two fictitious cities confront each other: on the one hand, isolated building complexes in a barren landscape; on the other, an overpopulated metropolis with a sea of skyscrapers. In a speculative approach, Noorizadeh puts the calls for the dissolution of cities by the representatives of the Russian architectural avant-garde of the 1920s to the test and sketches out experimental ways for housing shortages in a Hong Kong of the future. Her method - analysing, dissecting and recombining - encompasses several levels of image and sound. The virtual world is accompanied by idiosyncratic music, historical and fictional narratives whose quotations appear in fragments and bold block letters in the landscape. The method is also found in the fragmented sports car, the spatial element of the installation. In this way, The Red City of the Planet of Capitalism interweaves different temporal, substantive and aesthetic levels. Bahar Noorizadeh, The Red City of the Planet of Capitalism, 2021 2-channel video (animation: Ruda Cabral, music: Mhamad Safa) in multimedia installation, Still (c) Bahar Noorizadeh, 2021