Callum Cooper: Paradoxical Plane

On view 1 – 31 May 2018

„Mention 'Brutalism' and you'll get two distinct reactions. Depending on who you talk to, it's either shorthand for 'concrete eyesore', or it marks the height of architecture's quest for housing utopia. Nowhere splits opinion like the Barbican Estate. Just last year [2014] it topped a poll of London's ugliest buildings, but property prices are soaring 50 years after construction began and it has long-served as a creative muse to artists, musicians and architects." (1)

Callum Cooper is responsible for one of the music videos that Tomo Taka lists in his article "Odes to Brutalism: 6 music videos that celebrate the concrete age" ('Month of Sundays' by Metronomy). We present the cinematic version of his dizzying homage to the Barbican Estate: Paradoxical Plane. Callum Cooper recorded the kaleidoscopic pictures with the help of a special construction in the corridors and on the squares of the Brutalist London building complex. Gravity seems overridden. The endlessly rotating images and their montage create a dizzying portrait of the of the building's forms and textures.

(1) Tomo Taka: „Odes to Brutalism: 6 music videos that celebrate the concrete age", in: TheSpaces.com, 19. Mai 2015, https://thespaces.com/2015/05/19/brutalism-6-music-videos-that-celebrate-the-concrete-age/?

Callum Cooper is an artist and filmmaker. His work covers a spectrum of the moving image from traditional, linear filmmaking to interactive technology driven artworks. Cooper's works are participatory in either their process, content or viewing experience. His linear films have screened internationally including Sundance 2011 (nominated best narrative short film) and Sundance 2013 (Jury Prize Focus Forward, short documentary). Cooper's non-linear work has been extensively exhibited including the Barbican Centre London (2011) and Toronto International Film Festival (2012).