2015-2016 // 3-channel projection on cubic screen, stereo // 3 plexiglas house models lighten up by 3 LEDs controlled by arduino board
Team: Concept, project management, interviews and 3D-Modelling: Gonzalo H. Rodríguez / 3D Animation: Thomas Hawranke / 3D Print and laser cutting: David Hahlbrock / Arduino: Kuai Shen / Music: Auriel Martin Reich
This project was only possible with the kindly support of the RheinFlanke gGmbh. Special thanks to Aischa-Lina Löbert, Jose Londji, Angelika Herta, and all the children that participated in the workshops: Francis Trogemann, Sina Steinhofer, Isabelle Pax, Mirsan B. Günes, Joao Fernandes, Mohammed Musave, Nikta Djanbazi, Priscilla Mabuala, Johanna Taxacher, Mona Saidmoradi, Marsid, Erijon, Ameth, Rasim, Emzat, Salit, Sudahan and Enes.
For a refugee, home has become a fiction: a memory from the past and a place somewhere in the future. Gonzalo H. Rodriguez interviewed three young refugees in Cologne, whose descriptions were translated into 3D models, presented as 3D animations and plexiglass objects. As the animations show up in the exhibition space, the viewer is driven without weight and resistance as a disembodied eye through the walls and doors of the houses. The interiors resemble catalogue’s homes, similar to those shown by architecture studios in their prospectuses: both impersonal and as surrogate forms of many possible lives. The resulting arbitrariness and coldness could be understood as an analogy to the Stranger, which is contained in the refugee’s incomplete descriptions of his or her desired image of an ideal home. But nobody there is able to ever arrive. And the floating camera turns out to be an instrument of power which, like the evil in horror films, is released of the limits of the physical world. We recognize places that could be anywhere and people that could be nowhere.
(DEU)
Für den Flüchtling ist das Zuhause zur Fiktion geworden, ein zukünftiger Ort oder eine Erinnerung. Gonzalo Rodriguez hat Jugendliche Flüchtlinge und Kinder in Köln befragt und aus ihren Beschreibungen 3d Modelle gebaut, die er in drei Videoanimationen und als reale Modelle aus Plexiglas zeigt. In den ausgespielten Videoanimationen gleitet der Betrachter als körperloses Auge durch die Häuser, ohne Gewicht und Widerstand, durch Wände und Türen. Die Interieurs gleichen den Musterwohnungen, wie sie Architekturbüros in ihren Prospekten zeigen, unpersönlich und als Surrogatformen vieler möglicher Leben. Die Beliebigkeit und Kälte, die daraus entsteht ist wohl als Analogie zur Fremde zu lesen, die dem Flüchtling widerfährt und die sich noch in seinem Wunschbild, in seiner unvollständigen Beschreibung eines idealen Zuhauses ablagert. Hier kommt keiner an und die schwebende Kamera gibt sich sogleich als Instrument der Macht zu erkennen, die wie das Böse im Horrorfilm nicht an die Grenzen der physischen Welt gebunden ist. Es entstehen Orte die überall sein könnten und Menschen die nirgends ankommen.
Jan Wagner
Chairman, Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf
The project “Mise-en-Scène” began with the idea of freely associating the stranger in terms of visualizing his imaginary, non-existent habitats. But who is the stranger? This work was not about answering that question, but rather about creating specific mise-en-scènes that could function not only as spaces but also as narratives about the stranger. In this context, thanks to the kind support of the RheinFlanke association, I had the opportunity to conduct interviews with children and young people housed in a Cologne residential home for refugees. Erijon, Marsid and Ameth described their imagined spaces with imprecise gestures, words or sketches, later translated by me as digital 3D models. The method is not new and is reminiscent of the pre-Albertine notation system of architecture, which defined three-dimensional places from imprecise – sometimes purely subjective – descriptions of space and passed these on as models and figures.
gonzalohrodriguez.net 
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