“Beijing”, an 86-minute 35mm film, focuses on one of the most intricate and ambiguous international broadcasted events of past years – the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. “Beijing” observes the overwhelmingly perplexing and contradictory economy and authority of China, made all the more resonant in current climate of the global cities.
Sarah Morris' fifth short documentary film, investigates the psychology, architecture and aesthetic of the American city. It reveals a new cityscape of Los Angeles by tracking its de-centered plan, complex architecture, and most importantly its crucial role as a center of film production. “Los Angeles” posits the city as a hyper-narrative within a very distinct duration of time. Here the city is caught at its most ebullient and narcissistic moment: the week leading up to the Oscars. A sequence of images and cinematic situations set to an original musical score, range from the rehearsals and pre-production moments of the Academy Awards to a John Lautner house, Brad Pitt on the set of “Mr. And Mrs. Smith” at Twentieth Century Fox, the final taping of Hollywood Squares at CBS, the legendary Bonaventure Hotel, Pat Kingsley at work, I.M. Pei’s Creative Artist’s Agency, Mulholland Drive, the Department of Water and Power, and the Vanity Fair party.
Sarah Morris made the film “Capital” in Washington during the final days of the Clinton administration. It is a record of now unimaginable access to the centers of power. Capital continues Morris’ investigation of the way we decode and therefore begin to understand the built world around us. “Capital”, first exhibited at the National Gallery in Berlin (Hamburger Bahnhof) draws a complex and layered city portrait. The Mall, the White House Press Office, the World Bank, uniformed members of the Secret Service, the Presidential motorcade, the Watergate Complex, the Kennedy Center, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, The Pentagon, the daily activities of the President and an overall consideration of the city form a sequence of reflection points for her series of paintings. While her earlier paintings from New York and Las Vegas offered a new examination of the codes and structures of our urban environment, these new works introduce a revised mapping of power, desire, urbanism and design.
Taking its title from an all-day/all-night convenience store, “AM/PM” examines the famous Las Vegas Strip, portraying the disorienting world of corporate hotels and casinos which utilise and redefine the spectacle in relation to architecture. “AM/PM” posits the concept of distraction itself as a strategy and the city as a conspiracy, which manipulates and directs the visitor.
