Fernsehturm

Tacita Dean’s film, Fernsehturm, takes its name from Berlin’s iconic television tower in Alexanderplatz, which was erected in the 1960s and was intended by the city’s Socialist Unity Party to be a monument to the future of the German Democratic Republic. The tower serves as the setting of Dean’s atmospheric film, which is comprised of a forty-four minute static shot looking across the tower’s restaurant interior, towards a curved wall of windows that allow diners to observe the city while they eat.

Dean has created six photogravure prints based on film stills, which record the slowly changing light of the rotating restaurant. As twilight falls and the light fades before deepening and blackening, the forms of the restaurant interior fluctuate between visibility and obscurity until the fluorescent lights are switched on, transforming the window surfaces from transparent glass to reflecting screens.