Hubbard/Birchler, Grand Paris Texas, 2008, Production shot
Hubbard/Birchler, Grand Paris Texas, 2008, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Grand Paris Texas, 2008, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Grand Paris Texas, 2008, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Grand Paris Texas, 2008, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Grand Paris Texas, 2008, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Night Shift, 2005/6, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, House with Pool, 2004, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, House with Pool, 2004, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, House with Pool, 2004, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Johnny, 2004, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Single Wide, 2002, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Single Wide, 2002, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Single Wide, 2002, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Eight, 2001, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Eight, 2001, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Detached Building, 2001, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Detached Building, 2001, Video still
Hubbard/Birchler, Detached Building, 2001, Video still

Works in the exhibition

Grand Paris Texas, 2008
High-definition video with sound, length: 54 min.

Around 150 km northeast of Dallas the small Texas town of Paris is situated, its main attraction being a miniature reproduction of the Eiffel Tower crowned by a red cowboy hat. Paris, Texas has achieved a measure of notoriety due to Wim Wenders’s eponymous film, despite that the town doesn't appear in the film nor hosted the filmmaking production.
In Paris, Texas, the long-abandoned cinema “The Grand” was discovered by Hubbard and Birchler. This singular location populated by pigeons, where time stands still while it simultaneously advances, ultimately prompted the artists to produce a video work in and about “The Grand” and Paris, Texas. Taking up documentary formats, Grand Paris Texas intermingles the erstwhile site of the projecting of filmic illusions with projections, intertwining the French metropolis and Wim Wenders’s film, onto a small town.
At the dilapidated cinema, cluttered with debris and dated technology, we observe a film team armed with dust masks and gloves, their activities reminiscent of those pursued by speleologists. At one point, Hubbard and Birchler are even caught in the picture.
In a series of interviews, local residents comment on the former cinema, on films in general, and on Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas in particular. A funeral home director, for one, compares his work with that of a film director.
In Grand Paris Texas, narratives and metanarratives are intricately interwoven—for instance, in the involvement of a VHS tape of Wenders’s film that was found by the artists in a video store in Paris, Texas. Years ago, another video renter had accidentally overwritten the last section of the film, making it impossible to discover how the story of Paris, Texas ends. This anecdote can indeed be interpreted as a reference to the open narrative techniques employed by Hubbard and Birchler.

Night Shift, 2005–2006
High-definition video with sound, length: 08:24 min. (loop)

Over four subsequent episodes, all of which are set in a U.S. police car at night, the following chain of events is repeated: Sam, an aging officer, is waiting in the car. A male, or alternately female, colleague—with gender and skin color respectively shifting—joins Sam with two cups of coffee. The waiting officer time and again takes hold of his drink to the words “Two sugars, no cream.” The shifting colleagues thereupon begin a soliloquizing conversation that revolves around the threshold between being asleep and awake. Sometimes the transience and the loss of dreams is discussed, other times the indeterminable and uncontrollable moment of awakening. Might we be sleeping when we believe to be awake? To what extent do dreams and reality interpenetrate? Parallel to the philosophical considerations, Night Shift unravels a game, complexly intertwined in terms of both form and content, involving repetition, mirroring, and deviation.

House with Pool, 2004
High-definition video with sound, length: 20:39 min. (loop)

House with Pool is a concatenation of numerous potential encounters marked by relentless dynamism—and, at the same time, a narrative about “not-encountering”: of persons, past and present, conscious and subconscious, cause and effect. The protagonists are a young woman and an older one—perhaps mother and daughter—as well as a gardener who is to make a terrible discovery. The mute events take place at a fenced property with house, pool, and yard. Impelling the flow of the narrative are objects, plots, noises, and sonances: for instance, a piano piece that is played in two variations.

Johnny, 2004
High-definition video with sound, length: 03:51 min. (loop)

Johnny zooms in on adolescent musicians clad in red uniforms in a marching band. The trumpeter has set the key for the song When Johnny Comes Marching Home, but the other band members cannot seem to bring themselves to musically accompany him. The camera advances very closely in on the playing musician as well as on those refusing to play. While we are only shown fragments of the trumpeter’s face, we are able to freely discern the faces of the silent musicians, some tense, some placid. The presented portraits are always of individual nature, for we never see the entire group at once. Even the hands of the musicians, busy keeping the different instruments ready to play, are captured by the camera.
The song When Johnny Comes Marching Home dates from the American Civil War and is attributed to Patrick S. Gilmore. It concurrently sings of and summons the heroes returning home from the war, celebrating a triumph that has yet to be redeemed.

Single Wide, 2002
High-definition video with sound, length: 06:07 min. (loop)

The camera circles around a mobile home of the U.S. “single wide” type as well as around the pick-up truck standing out front. One wall of the mobile home has been removed, enabling us to look into its stage-like interior in the manner of a dollhouse. Between the two scenes a young woman is moving about. She leaves the home and gets into the pick-up, giving free rein to her anger and despair. While at first appearing to drive away, she suddenly barrels into the house instead, with half of the truck ending up stuck in the house and the other half jutting out. Unperturbed by these strange events, the camera continues its circumscribing path. Before and after, cause and effect, as well as the beginning and end of this endlessly repeating narrative remain vacant in the process.

Eight, 2001
High-definition video with sound, length: 03:35 min. (loop)

The video work Eight already references in its title both what is to be told here as well as the structure of its narrative. It apparently revolves around the (eighth?) birthday of a girl—and this in an endless loop. The camera is constantly panning, only interrupted by two short editing sequences, from the interior of a house to the outside yard and back. The localization of and transition between interior and exterior here remain just as unresolved as do the starting and termination points of the narrative. The girl is oscillating back and forth through these ambiguous states. Having arrived in the rainy, nocturnal yard, she approaches the remnants of the drenched party and cuts herself a piece of the birthday cake. Yet before she can take a bite, the girl has already arrived back in the house, only to recommence her journey back outside. At the point where the bounds between inside and outside—sheltered home and stormy world—are traversed by the girl, the spatial order has already been reversed.

Detached Building, 2001
High-definition video with sound, length: 05:38 min. (loop)

In Detached Building, the camera pans back and forth in a seemingly constant movement between the interior and exterior spaces of a corrugated tin shed. Outside it is dark. The lighted interior of the shed is cluttered with household items, tools, and musical instruments. Sometimes the shed is devoid of people, other times filled with a group of male teenagers immersed in rehearsing a piece of music. Outside we can at times perceive a young woman throwing stones at a house in the background, and then she suddenly disappears again. As in other video works by Hubbard und Birchler, a void emerges on the threshold between inside and outside, a visual pause within which paradoxical temporal leaps take form. They are turning points at which the various sequences are simultaneously interlinked and severed. They mark, in Detached Building, tears within the spatial and temporal order, and order of the sexes.

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