PORTRAIT AS A BUILDING, 2008/2009, 3 channel video installation, sound, DVD PAL, installation view at “art berlin contemporary 2009”, Akademie der Künste, Berlin

Markus Draper’s video installation Portrait as a Building consists of three symmetrically arranged monitors, showing three different scenarios of destruction. With calm but decisive regularity, objects resembling wood chippings and debris move up and down on top of an imaginary bubble on the ground. Shown in loops, the films generate a state of permanent abrasion, underscored by the sharp breathing rhythm of the soundtrack.

Each utopia is necessarily connected with both its dissolution and destruction. In the work of Markus Draper, the moment of a desire’s manifestationis irrelevant. Consequently, in his new work, too, he begins on the reverse side of utopia and shoots straight into the fog of erosion. Neither beginning nor end, let alone cause or consequence, can be determined. Perceptible is only the contingency out of which things are drawn into new shapes – must be drawn into new shapes.