Stills from “Banzai Detroit,” a film in progress by CARY LOREN, developed as a response to Jeff Wall’s famous photo “The Destroyed Room” – an early studio set-up and one of his first transparency light-box images. The film is part of an art project that will be screened in Tilburg, Netherlands in the spring.

The film spirals outward around Detroit locations – beginning with homes and apartments; living areas to institutional sites; schools, airports, police stations, business, parks, etc..

At each site images are burned including copies of Wall’s ‘Destroyed Room’, icons of Detroit culture, and personal history. The work will be an index of material ruins, cultural debris and autobiography – the post-destruction of an urban wasteland.

Transitions between sites have short clips of Japanese ritual suicide, (Seppuku or Hara Kiri) and the kamikaze, taken from classic and trashy Samurai films and stock footage. The final work can be projected as a background for a live noise performance. It will also be narrated by homeless people interviewed throughout the city, some who currently are living in its ruins.

project by WHATSPACE, coming to Berlin February 26, and to Tilburg March 6…