Sarah Morris

Midtown, 1998

The film Midtown is composed of floods of images running vertically, horizontally and diagonally. Within technical parameters such as focal length, sharpness and intensity of light a cine camera reveals the individual images in a film in rapid succession, thus cutting out vertical, horizontal or diagonal strips from our visual reality. Focussed LEDs convey the idea of pulsating energy in the rhythmic alternation of a geometric pattern of colour. The perspective expands and the viewer realizes that the light spectacle is part of an advertisement on the Jumbotron on Times Square. The camera documents motion sequences in a city; positioned between people and traffic it registers individual movements in the middle distance and at close range, movements that then become lost in the blur. The films of Sarah Morris (b. 1967) show the various different manifestations of urban life. The essence of the architecture in Washington, Las Vegas and New York is mounted with rather chance observations of people to create a rhythmically arranged film. This is reminiscent of the carefully dramatized geometry of her painting series on each of these cities.

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