IHME Project 2011 - The Longest Film Ever Made
The Danish Superflex´s installation created for the IHME Contemporary Art Festival was a film and sculpture titled Modern Times Forever (Stora Enso Building, Helsinki). The work showed the Stora Enso building at Kanavaranta 1, Helsinki. The film was shown in Helsinki Market Square on a 40m2 LED screen, so that one could see the original building simultaneously with the building in the film. In the film the building changed all the time. The film lasted ten days, i.e. the work lasted as long as its exhibition period. This continuous exhibition period meant that the film could be watched 24 hours a day for ten days.
It started on Wednesday 23.3 at 20.00 and ended during the IHME Days on Saturday 2.4.2011 at 21.00.
The presence of the IHME Project added a new temporal dimension to the urban space. Apart from being present in our everyday lives, quietly changing for ten days, the film´s time raced ahead at an estimated several-hundred-year gallop each day.
The film is a fiction about what could happen to the Stora Enso building as an architectural and ideological symbol, over the next few thousands of years, if the days of humankind come to an end, and only time and the weather affect the building.
In so called Vanitas paintings there are specific symbols that remind people of death. Superflex´s work acts like a Vanitas painting, reminding us of the ephemerality of the built environment. At the same time, it prompts us to think about the future of architecture, the city, the land and the globe. The underlying message in Vanitas is: Seize the moment!
The Stora Enso building is an important cityscape landmark, whose style has prompted discussion ever since it was built. The building, referred to by the locals as "the sugar cube", is Alvar Aalto´s design and was completed in 1962. Its clean white modernist exterior has been an object of love and hate ever since its completion - especially since the spot was previously occupied by a Neo-Renaissance urban palace, the Norrmén house, designed by Theodor Höijer.
IHME Days Saturday was dedicated to discussion of Superflex´s work and related questions. Superflex was present to discuss their IHME Project 2011 on Saturday April 2nd. The programme included eg. a lecture by Professor Emerita Riitta Nikula, on the history of the Stora Enso building, the discussion that took place around it, and its significance for the change in urban values. The architect Mikael Sundman talked about the future of the Katajanokka area from an urban-planning perspective.
The film ended on Saturday 2.4.2011 at 21.00. There was a considerable gathering there to watch the film´s climax in the Market Square on Saturday at 20-21. All this will happened only once!