Urban Exquis is inspired both by the cadavre exquis method of poetry, in which a collection of writers blindly contribute isolated words that together compose a poem, and by Gordon Matta-Clarkâs 1976 film City Slivers, in which the artist depicts New York City through a collection of masked views that fill only a portion of the film frame. Urban Exquis consists of several short video slivers hat depict various urban environments. Like the word fragments in a cadaver exquis, each video sliver is composed by a different moviemaker, artist, or architect. Like the images in City Slivers, each video sliver is a vertically-oriented fragment of a conventional video frame that defies the conventional widescreen format of cinema. In both method and form, the installation challenges many assumptions regarding the relevance of cinematic imagery to urban space. Urban Exquis suggests that the identity of the city resides in simultaneity and adjacency, not in spatial and temporal unity. Like the city itself, it cannot be understood as a singular vision. It is fragmentary, elusive, frustrating, and (ultimately) beautiful in a way that eludes intention.
Ciotat Studio is an interdisciplinary design and research practice based in New York City. Its work includes examples of architectural and urban design, moviemaking, drawing, and writing. www.ciotatstudio.com
