The lights of the city hide from me the light of other worlds but not the knowledge that the starry firmament arches over me. (*)
Twin Cities was filmed from the top of a skyscraper in the South Korean capital of Seoul. The panorama is made up of a combination of 24 video images and evolves into two "city planets" (day and night), which rotate around the viewer on two screens – the view point appears to float as if in a satellite between these two planets. The spectator loses the notion of horizon and is left with a visually enchanting vertigo.
The sound track (in Korean) examines the urban experience from different angles, the reality of the observer and its relativity. The spoken stories are small virtual voyages through time and space telling about a strange city, society or civilization seen from a cultural and geographical distance – the Korean language being another layer of alienation for a non-Korean spectator. These short stories and sounds are as if picked up from the radio aether. The texts are edited quotes from the Finnish author Leena Krohnʼs novels Tainaron, Tribar and Doña Quixote and other citizens. The stories are projected as subtitles on the black wall between the image screens showing the revolving city planets.
Twin Cities reflects on picturing or describing a city, viewing it as from a point of an outsider, alienated by a strange place and culture. At the same time, the work examines the relationship between reality and the cinematic.
(*) from Twin Cities, originally cited from Leena Krohn: Tribar, 1993
