15.04.26 TO BE PART OF A BIGGER PICTURE

Maia Gusberti’s visual research project To Be Part of a Bigger Picture explores performative and media-reflective encounters within expanded images of urban landscapes. Installed in public spaces, diverse images of cityscapes question the role of image consumers and producers in constructing and shaping our world through its representation.

Over the course of three sessions, students in Fabienne Liptay’s seminar “Cinema Expanded” at the University of Zurich were invited to test the artist’s concept and set up an initial intervention in public space. This first experimental installation used an aerial photograph of the city of Zurich. The printed fragments were collectively assembled and laid out on the Polyterrasse in Zurich, where they served as a scene—a makeshift platform upon which we staged our encounter as a discursive “sit-in.”

By engaging with the aerial view depicting the city itself, we employed a technology and perspective that condition and shape our worldview as the foundation for a physical, intellectual, and filmic exploration. We brought the aerial view down to the ground, transforming the vertical gaze into a horizontal one. During this collective sit-in, we discussed Hito Steyerl’s essay “In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective” (e-flux 24, April 2011) and reflected on our relationship to aerial and satellite imagery, as well as on our role as “visual citizens.”

We situated our physical presence within the image and simultaneously documented our “image-based” discussions using our various smartphones. Through this process, we became “part of a bigger picture.” The resulting documentary material will eventually form the basis of an essayistic film that reimagines “visual citizenship” through multiple sit-ins and from a plurality of perspectives.