Coming Soon

Coming Soon - an urban, site-specific intervention - is informed by architectural simulations typically presented on large-scale hoardings. Often erected on brown-field sites surrounded by fences, these images promise architectural transformations packaged with a bright blue future. With Coming Soon, we mimic this convention but instead of an idealistic simulation we are presenting an impossible reality. By means of a “mise-en-abyme”, the photo of the site contains itself the way it is or, more precisely, the way it was at the time of taking the picture. The vertiginous effect of the image is due to the fact that it incessantly announces a future to come...
Arguably, our intervention presents a quite pessimistic view on urban developments. However, we are much more interested in the potential of these brown-field sites to be spaces for free imagination, where passengers can project anything they like. In this way, we attempt to protect the space from time and from any too concrete a simulation. Further, like in architectural simulations, our board displays a web address for 'more information' (www.imiteme.com/leo), and in order not to disappoint the passer-by or spoil her fantasy, she would actually find, on the virtual site, exactly the same image as on the real site.
Material used: Digital print on blue-back paper (244 x 208 cm), wooden structure (244 x 480 cm), Internet page

INTERFACE focuses on new works and re-interpretations through performance, sound, moving image, installation, painting, photography and sculptural interventions. All the artists are working in unfamiliar territories and through their actions are proposing new interpretations of local environments and raising questions about the way spaces are negotiated. As an artists' collaboration, INTERFACE aims to animate the public space, encourage participation and change the perception of the familiar. It also encourages critical dialogue and on-going partnerships between the artists.
Cécile Colle}{Ralf Nuhn have discussed their work in an artist talk, together with Chloe Brooks and Bob and Roberta Smith, on Thursday 22 September 2011 at Claremont Studios, Hastings.