Semiotics of the City

Single channel video · 2020
 

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4K · 16:9 · Colour · Stereo · 4:03 min. · 2020

The city is not. Not because of a hypothetical,
physical absence—the city is well present—but
because it escapes naming.
(Johannes Binotto and Andri Gerber)

In Semiotics of the City, shots of urban situations flicker past in rapid succession. They are underlaid by computer-generated voices that enumerate the audio-visual elements they contain. The result is a close-meshed network of terms and categories whose sense of representing the depicted urbanity as completely as possible is taken ad absurdum.