Rosa Barba Plastic Limits – For the Projection of Other Architectures, 2021

Conceived for Rosa Barba's exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Plastic Limits – For the Projection of Other Architectures forms a dialogue with Mies van der Rohe's concept of architecture as a new form of life. Barba filmed inside and outside the Neue Nationalgalerie during the refurbishment of the building. Shrouded in fog and brought into complex relationships with other buildings in Berlin—i.e. the room hosting the “Wet Collection” (specimens preserved in ethanol filled jars) of the Museum für Naturkunde, but also the concrete cylinder forming the Schwerbelastungskörper built by Albert Speer in 1941–42 and one of the few remaining vestiges of Adolf Hitler‘s plans to remake the city of Berlin—the film opens up an astonishing new view of the Berlin architectural landmark. The fundamental point of connection is Mies van der Rohe‘s inclusion into three-dimensional space of the dimension of time and the architect’s special treatment of light, reflection and transparency. As immaterial components of architecture, duration and light are employed in van der Rohe’s work as a plastic material that defines and breaks through spatial boundaries. For Mies van der Rohe, architecture constitutes not merely a three-dimensional space, but a temporal process that is constantly updated; it constructs itself in the movement and perception of the people that experience it. Running down the side of the film is a text, a sort of lexicon of the artist’s personal vision and ideas around film, sound and architecture. A musical leitmotif—composed by Barba and interpreted by several musicians that she invited for the occasion—functions as a structuring element. Its rhythmic composition represents a score for cinematic observations of Berlin’s urban space Barba engages within the medium of film through a sculptural approach. In her works, Barba creates installations and site-specific interventions to analyze the ways film articulates space, placing the work and the viewer in a new relationship. Questions of composition, physicality of form and plasticity play an important role for the artist as Barba examines the industry of cinema and its staging vis-à-vis gesture, genre, information and documents. Her film works are situated between experimental documentary and fictional narrative. They often focus on natural landscapes and human-made interventions into the environment and explore the relationship of historical records, personal anecdotes, and filmic representation, creating spaces of memory and uncertainty.