Hermman P. Huber, 'T I R I N G', video still.
Hermann P. Huber's 'T I R I N G', a video made in an abandoned, subsequently squatted, department store in the middle of Cairo, works both as a documentary of contemporary life and as a carefully staged portrait of another era's fallen grandeur, coiling everything that remains back in over itself.
The title of 25min, 2006 video, which is subtitled, 'This building is the center of Egypt', alludes to the name of the international commercial establishment founded by Austrian department store mogul Victor Tiring. Built on Attaba square in 1910, the prominent Tiring store was expropriated during World War I; since then, the property has seen many owners and been put to a variety of uses, from studios and workshops, sweatshops and squatted quarters, to becoming a sort of covered market for street vendors.
The building has managed to retain most of its manicured exterior composition intact, while the inside bears the decaying, haunted house marks of a place that has been stripped and re-configured too often. Layers of luxury have peeled off, but certain of its interior detailing, however bare it looks now, suggest plenty about the structure's initial purpose and its haunting former lives - bringing to mind Mike Nelson's adventures through the psychology of abandoned spaces, as well as more general procedure of urban reappropriation.
Through long takes coursing through the site, Huber's video is a wondrously minimalist tour through the history of globalisation. The Tiring store is linked to the history of modern trade when it was based around the western exploitation of its colonies - a stage in the building's lifeline we soon can overlook through the artist's representation of the current metaphoric tenants, whose no frills decoration vernacular emphasizes a kind of arrow pointing to history's entropy and inevitable erosion.
The city buzzes outside, and inside the quasi-derelict yet still functional building, an equally chaotic local life survives by wrapping itself around all the possible angles, what's left of its own Tiring body. Somehow, for me the central wrought iron staircase banister, projecting its complicated, imported design, quickly becomes a magnetic symbol - an unweathered, opulent reminder it may be the last part of the original building to fall yet, but one day, it too will succumb.
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez
HERMANN P. HUBER, 'T I R I N G'
Curated by Angela Stief
To 17 Oct
Kunsthalle Wien
Mariahilferstrasse 1b
A-1060 Vienna
T: +43 1 5 2189 1201
Huber's video is also included in
'THE SOUND OF SILENCE', a show of Vienna-based artists's work made in Cairo.
To 17 Oct 2007
Townhouse Gallery
10 Nabrawy Street off Champollion Street
Downtown, Cairo, Egypt
T: +2 (02) 2576 8086
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