OPEN HOUSE
03/12/2012.
[Trailer] from Diane Nerwen
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
This video shows how in the processes of urban transformation we always found on one hand theory, with good thinking justifications sold as improving the conditions of those who live in the city, and on the other hand the reality, which is not always so utopian, with speculation and hardness with its inhabitants.
Screenshot video, Open House by Diane Nerwen.
Screenshot video, Open House by Diane Nerwen.
Screenshot video, Open House by Diane Nerwen.
“Readily visible under the thin veneer of real estate ads pushing Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s future as a destination for the moneyed, yet “hip”, classes is an urban renewal project on a scale not seen since Robert Moses’ “slum” clearance of the 1960’s. Documenting the brutal nature of the development spree which occurred as a result of the neighborhood’s re-zoning from light manufacturing/residential to the loosening of codes that allowed for forty story towers on the waterfront, Nerwen’s video offers stark evidence against the cheerful notion that the unrestricted laws of free markets are “good for everyone”. With images of a neighborhood being literally torn apart by outside developers capitalizing on a frenzied housing market, and locals under pressure to “sell out” while the price is right, this work documents aspects of an incredible drama that has been woefully underreported in the mainstream media.”
Text by Peter Scott, Carriage Trade Gallery “Market Forces/ Part 1: Consuming Territories.”
Screenings: Documentary Fortnight, Museum of Modern Art, NY; video_dumbo, Brooklyn, NY, HDFEST Seattle, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Germany, MMX Open Art Venue, Berlin, Germany, Experiments in Cinema V5.1 Film Festival, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Athens International Film Festival, Ohio, Rooftop Films, Brooklyn, NY.
Exhibitions (Chapter 1: Removal): "Market Forces/Consuming Territories", Carriage Trade Gallery, NY; Momenta Art, Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Hordaland Art Center, Bergen, Norway; Erna Hecey Gallery, Brussels, Belgium.
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DIANE NERWEN
Diane Nerwen is a video artist and media arts educator. She has shown her work internationally, including screenings at the Berlin Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Guggenheim Museum, NY, and the Tate Modern, London. Her work has been supported by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and Creative Capital Foundation. She was awarded a DAAD Artist in Residence Fellowship in Berlin in 2001. Her work is distributed by Video Data Bank, Chicago and Vtape, Toronto. Nerwen was born in Montreal and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
