Peter Greenaway - Geneva Stairs

You are spectator

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Last updated 16-02-2001

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peter greenaway - geneva - genève - stairs - At the turn of the century pull-out postcards showing the most important tourist attractions in a town became popular souvenirs. The artist/director Peter Greenaway's project Stairs is built on the same principle. He has chosen one hundred locations in a city and installed stair-like objects on location. The idea is that you walk up the stairs and look through the frame, and there you find your own postcard, with the difference that you are watching reality, not an image of it. You get to see everything, from spectacular views over the city ,to a detail of a tree trunk in a park. Every viewer creates his or her own film or their own postcard. The film Stairs 1 Geneva is partly a documentation of the project, but most of all it is a work of art in itself, a work of art describing another work of art. The film takes its language from the world of computers, several images are shown simultaneously in so called windows, screens. On one image level we see aeral shots of how the stairs are flown to their locations with a helicopter and at the same time on a different level we see the actual work of art, the view. All lovers of Greenaway's earlier films will recognize themselves, the stairs are nothing but a variation of a theme found in The Draughtsman's Contract, the draughtman's drawing tool. Sometimes Greenaway has enhanced reality by having mysterious characters, living statues or historical people, lurking inside the view, or he demonstrates the acoustics of one location by using a singer while a computer graphic image of her voice is shown on another level. Stairs 1 Geneva is one hundred minutes of one hundred very vivid and magical postcards. Director's statement