Information technology and transport are themes that Chip Lord has used before in his work. In this video they are the pillars of the metropolis at the end of the millennium. It is a vision of the development of that city, starting in 1997 and ending sometime after the year 2000. For this Lord uses excerpts from 'The Overexposed City' (Paul Virilio: 'The Lost Dimension'), the opening scene of Godard's 'Alphaville', Ridley Scott's 'Blade Runner' and excerpts from his own video, 'Motorist'. All of these bits and pieces come back time and again in a four-part composition of images which were shot in different big cities throughout the world. Cars, an endless number of moving cars, crowd the city streets. Scooters and bicycles swerve in and out among them; the underground threads its way underneath the ant hill of the metropolis; the train sails above it, thanks to the network of viaducts. This swarming mass makes a formidable contrast to the gleaming fronts of the giant Silicon Valley corporations, rising out of the desert as inaccessible bulwarks of power. You see no people there, only an occasional car slowly disappearing into an underground car park. “In this new perspective devoid of horizon”, says Virilio, “the city is entered not through the gate, nor through an 'arc de triomphe', but rather through an electronic audience system.” Among all the technology and electronics there is one age-old human aspect that persists, and is even indispensable: the legend. Again Virilio: “Sometimes reality is too complex for oral communication. But legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world.”
– Lies Holtrop
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Music: Paul Muraki
Chip Lord ° 1944, Cleveland (USA)
Lives and works in San Francisco (USA)
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