The Fourth Space
2010, 30:00, 4-channel video installation
excerpt

with Moving Parts, a 6-channel sound installation by Aleksei R. Stevens

The Fourth Space owes a debt of gratitude to a fixation I had on two odd structures asserting themselves in the New Haven landscape: Marcel Breuer's 1969 Armstrong-Pirelli Tire Building, built as an office complex on what had been considered a prime waterfront development area, and which now sits in the Ikea parking lot; and the Knights of Columbus Headquarters, by Roche-Dineloo Architects, 1969, a 23-story red tower with circular concrete columns at each corner. I photographed and taped these buildings until I felt I understood them.

Later I read about the Aqua Tower in Chicago, Studio Gang's 2009 86-story apartment complex, designed so that Chicago's famous wind would move around it rather than push against it. The Aqua is not weighted at the top, and therefore represents an alternative to the practice of adding tonnage to the tops of skyscrapers to steady them against high winds. I happened to visit Chicago shortly after reading about the Aqua and was able to capture some footage, but I was also able to shoot Chicago's other landmarks including the Marina Towers, the Wrigley Building, Trump Tower, the Chase Bank, Mercantile Exhange, and the streets themselves.

The Fourth Space is based in other interests as well, and is allied with an earlier practice of photographing my surroundings on a daily basis, which enabled me to notice what architecture does in its placement, and observe the negotiations people make many times a day with the structures and pathways that either prohibit or allow access, that help decide our relationship to the places and settings of our routines.

Other spaces in the video: San Miguel de Allende in Central Mexico -- Juan's Cafe, the Oratorio, the Instituto Allende, the Biblioteca, streets, traffic, and Mexico's famous green taxis; on Dean Street, under demolition in Brooklyn; the split tower at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus; the Alps surrounding the village of Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Included are beds slept in, tables worked at, ceiling fans stared up at, chairs and couches sat on, cats petted, windows looked out from, garden paths walked, planes flown in, mountains crossed, oceans swam in. Altogether, the record of a year of taking note of location.

Besides the interests as discussed above, this installation emerged out of months of wandering, of having no proper address, and being autonomous as well as homeless. Places did not exist in relation to the home I would go back to at the end of the day. I was particularly free to roam about and observe.

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