The Continuous Moment, Part 1

Hironaka & Suib’s The Continuous Moment, Part 1 presents a speculative history where the radical Italian architecture collective Superstudio’s proposed Continuous Monument (1969-70) has been realized and must be maintained by a lone window washer. As an expression of power, the Monument’s endless mirrored surface allows those inside to look out, while reflecting the gaze of those hoping to see inside the building. 

In this 8-minute video work, this Earth-spanning structure (originally conceived as “a model for total urbanization”) has moved from the theoretical to the physical, looming over urban and natural landscapes, and woven into the collective experience through its ubiquitous physical presence as well countless cameos on film. Colliding boundaries of manmade and natural, labor and societal dreams, material opulence and architectural minimalism, Hironaka & Suib take Superstudio’s proposal to its logical conclusion.

We are revisiting this 2014 work as part of our media screening series in the 534 gallery window as it asks prescient questions about our collective dreams for society and investigates the seductive but alienating aesthetics of the corporate architecture that dominates urban spaces around the world.

Nadia Hironaka & Matthew Suib work collaboratively on films, videos, public artworks and immersive installations spanning over a decade, often extending their collaboration to include other artists, musicians and composers. Their practice embraces research and experimentation, encompassing historical fact, popular fiction and creative speculation. Working across moving-image culture and mass media idioms, they build counter-mythologies, alternate or parallel realities, and forward-looking visions of the world around us.
 
The Philadelphia-based artists have been collaborators since 2008. They are recipients of several honored awards including a 2015 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Pew Fellowships in the Arts and Fellowships from CFEVA and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Their work has been widely exhibited both domestically and abroad at venues including, Fondazione MAXXI (Rome), New Media Gallery (Vancouver), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), UCLA Hammer Museum, PS1/MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Arizona State University Art Museum. They have been artists-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Banff Centre, Marble House Project and the Millay Colony for Arts.
 
Suib is co-founder of Greenhouse Media and Hironaka serves as a professor and department chair of film and video at the Maryland Institute College of Art.