Architecture

Sentences is a beguiling, hypnotic meditation on the poetics of space.

Red House is an animation that playfully explores metamorphosis in relation to the stability and structure of housing. Created using the AMIGA computer console and Deluxe Paint IV software, hand drawn sequences delight in the constant reconfiguration of images, characters and forms.

Animated by Barry Doupé
With sound design by James Whitman

Trip is inspired by the main oeuvre of architect Raine Karp--the concert hall designed for the city of Tallinn between 1975-1980. Considered the most important building realized in Estonia, Linnahall is a time capsule preserving the utopian ideas of centralized power and of egalitarian modernism, and an example of how architecture can stir public emotions in our times of corporate dominance.

Hub proposes that the idea of home is today perhaps better expressed as a sense of being between places. Within the dalectical interplay between global processes and local environments, Hub suggests that displacement and mobility itself might be thought of as a new way of belonging. Hub uses the transitory space of the airport—defined by its arrivals and departures—to introduce the notion of disappearance to articulate new ideas on belonging and identity.

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was both a pioneer architect of the modern era and a global theorist. Fuller developed a system of geometry that he called “Energetic-Synergetic geometry,” the most famous example of which is the geodesic dome. His many designs for automobiles and living spaces were applications of a wider theory.

The Templo Mayor was the center of the Aztecs' religious life in Tenochtitlán, a ceremonial building in the heart of Mesoamerica. A center of political battles of contemporary Mexico. A ritual of resistance.

The Bats details the mating habits of flying mammals in an abandoned Mayan temple in the 14th Century.

This title is only available on Soft Science.

A montage of architecture and cabaret, juxtaposing a second hand view of New York as refracted through this artist's eyes.

This title is also available on Half-Lies: The Videoworks of Ximena Cuevas.

Futures for Failures is a double narrative of failure: architectural and social. Archival footage from a demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe building in St. Louis manifests as the materialization of modernity’s failure. Meanwhile, an intimate voiceover recounts a moment of laughter erupting during a stranger’s funeral, staging anachronous conversation between the disappeared and the disappearing.

Public Discourse is an in-depth study of illegal installation art. The primary focus is on the painting of street signs, advertising manipulation, metal welding, postering and guerrilla art, all performed illegally. Public Discourse is about passionate artists who want their work to be seen by a wide range of people rather than be confined to the systemic structures of galleries and museums.

Urban parks consist of two major elements: nature and man-made forms. Parks play an important role in the urban environment, offering relief in everyday life. While parks provide green spaces, they are not natural spaces; they are highly designed. Nature and Geometry in the Park is a series of short videos that explore parks, focusing on form. Case 3 features WNYC Transmitter Park, a relatively new park located on the waterfront in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which opened in 2012.

Trip is inspired by the main oeuvre of architect Raine Karp--the concert hall designed for the city of Tallinn between 1975-1980. Considered the most important building realized in Estonia, Linnahall is a time capsule preserving the utopian ideas of centralized power and of egalitarian modernism, and an example of how architecture can stir public emotions in our times of corporate dominance.

There is no better place to meet people than in the temporary community which gathers under a scant awning on a New York street in a downpour.

A great example of early 1970s counter-cultural activity and the influence of Buckminster Fuller. The video, shot in Woodstock, NY in November 1971, includes footage of a communal meal being eaten in the woods, and of children playing in the mud. The video goes on to document the building of a geodesic dome. As the group works, many of them naked, they are interviewed to camera, and explain how to build a dome. 

Part of paraconsistent sequence series and the hauntology series.

Cobra Mist explores the relationship between the coastal landscape of Orford Ness and its traces of military history, particularly the extraordinary ruined architecture of experimental radar and the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Still under the official secrets act, much of what took place on the Ness will only be revealed over time. Military buildings have been left to the elements to deteriorate, creating a tension between the time it will take for their secrets to come out and for the buildings to disappear.

In 1966, the Syrian government's Ministry of Endowments solicited plans for a building to replace a 14th-century Mamluk mosque in Martyr's Square in the center of Damascus. A young architect proposed a design for a 5-star hotel and new mosque. In 1971, his plans were scrapped. In 1982, a building began to be built. Hospital? Parking garage? Military housing? The project--now called the Basel al-Asad Center--has been the subject of much rumor and speculation. As of 2007, the building remains unfinished.

A watchful dog in a confusion of reflected chairs begins and ends Cohen’s finely tuned observational portrait of London’s Essex Street, and the inhabitants who work the shops and throng the pavement there. People hurrying, pausing, waiting or simply standing, intermingled with worn statues of historic peerage in the slanted light of late afternoon. A man holds a copy of The Law of Privacy and the Media as though testing its resilience against the quiet onslaught of an average work day.

Public Discourse is an in-depth study of illegal installation art. The primary focus is on the painting of street signs, advertising manipulation, metal welding, postering and guerrilla art, all performed illegally. Public Discourse is about passionate artists who want their work to be seen by a wide range of people rather than be confined to the systemic structures of galleries and museums.

Urban parks consist of two major elements: nature and man-made forms. Parks play an important role in the urban environment, offering relief in everyday life. While parks provide green spaces, they are not natural spaces; they are highly designed. Nature and Geometry in the Park is a series of short videos that explore parks, focusing on form. Case 2 features Fort Greene Park in Downtown Brooklyn, which was originally the site of a fortification built for the Revolutionary War.

A history of New York City from Prehistoric times through the Space Age, composed entirely from documentary street footage.

"The richness of Cohen's vision is found in his haunting imagery and the perception that the thriving city of New York is really the accumulation of humanity's failures, as well as its triumphs."

-- Steve Seid, Seduced and Abandoned: The Homeless Video by Sachiko Hamada & Scott Sinkler and Jem Cohen (Berkeley: Pacific Film Archive, 1989)