Ein Stein vom Mond

Exhibition Ein Stein vom Mond, Amerika Haus, Berlin, 1970

Filmstill video installation Ecumenopolis, 20 mins

Ecumenopolis departs from the Cultural Cold War, in which East and West tried to extend their spheres of influence by means of export-urbanism. Within this framework, in America, modernist architecture and urban planning - as a counterpart of Soviet socialist realism - were considered to be a powerful instrument in Cold War politics. Ecumenopolis is an investigation - in and outside the context of the Cultural Cold War - into the Greek architect and urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis, his network of 262 Delians (representatives from the arts and sciences) and his ekistic mission. In the 1960s and 70s Doxiadis and the Delians were sailing the Aegean Sea, Greece, to explore the urban future. Ecumenopolis connects the island and ancient Greek city of Delos with Doxiadis’ world-encompassing city of the future Ecumenopolis. In order to envision the urban future, the Delians were to travel back in time.

Image and text by Elian Somers / Text editing by Hester van Gent / Score by Rutger Zuydervelt / Voiceover by Lori McKenzie / Voice recording by Silent M Studios

Filmstill video installation
Capital City, 15 mins

Capital City investigates Eurasia as a geographical, cultural and geopolitical concept, and a city of the future, Capital City, in the heart of Eurasia. The work zooms in on Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan between 1991-2019, who cast himself as a Eurasianist visionary and architect. The new capital city he erected from scratch in the Kazakh steppe was not just a nationalist project, but was also envisioned as the Heart of Eurasia, a utopian project with much wider ramifications.
In the work Capital City, a voice-over narrative connects Nazarbajev’s Eurasian mission with earlier ideas explored by the Eurasianist movement just after the Russian Revolution as well as the Eurasian ideologies that are deeply entwined with the Kremlin today. The cyclical narrative underscores how, over the past hundred years, the idea of Eurasia continues to be resurrected, while the underlying visions and geopolitical implications also reveal significant shifts.

Image and text by Elian Somers / Text editing by Hester van Gent / Score by Rutger Zuydervelt / Voiceover by Lori McKenzie / Voice recording by Silent M Studios