Single-channel video installation, color, sound
5 min 38 sec


In Detached Building the camera is in a continual state of motion. Like an unblinking eye, the camera travels along a track running inside a tin shed, passing through a wall and out into a rural backyard landscape. It is evening and the old tin shed is cluttered with tools, household junk, beer cans and music equiment. Outside the shed, the landscape is strewn with other forgotten construction debris. At the back of the yard, we see a large skeletal structure of an two storey, unfinished building. As the camera passes from inside to outside, a rock band appears within the shed, in the midst of a rehersal session. Outside, a teenage girl appears, in the process of throwing rocks at the unoccupied, abandoned building looming in the background. As the camera rolls from one end of the track to the other, there are small and seamless jumps in time as the camera passes through the architecture separating the inside and the outside. The narrative of the band and the teenage girl is based around this split, as a detachment of space, time and gender. Detached Building was shot on location in Austin, Texas in 2001. – the artists


Teresa Hubbard: *1965 in Dublin, Ireland | Living and working in Austin, USA and Berlin, Germany
Alexander Birchler: *1962 in Baden, Switzerland | Living and working in Austin, USA and Berlin, Germany