Two screens side by side in the Smart Museum of Art’s Calling on the Past exhibition display the same video, at first glance. Both open with a woman at the airport, surrounded by men in pristine suits, all waiting. The woman exits and the men unfurl newspapers, light cigarettes, and pace around baggage claim. As this goes on, small discrepancies between the two screens emerge—a man on the left stands seconds before the same figure on the right; a man on the right stretches when his counterpart does not. A subtle yet unsettling discord builds as viewers try to keep track of both videos.
Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation created this film, Tempelhof Tks 5 & 7, as part of the project Rape of the Sabine Woman, a reinterpretation of the legend of Rome’s founding in which the men of Rome abduct young women in order to propel their civilization forward. At the Smart, the film is displayed next to Etienne Baudet’s engraved depiction of the myth as it is classically told—a conversation between new and old. The gallery echoes with a faint tapping from these screens as shoes click against an expansive polished floor, keeping time as one after the other the videos zoom out. Massive stone walls, tall rectangular windows, and a silver clock with roman numerals looming over baggage claim reveal this as Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport. While much of Sussman’s project takes place in Greece, this section is specifically in a grayscale Tempelhof and its history is inextricably linked to Sussman’s choice of setting.
Tempelhof Airport, characterized by architect Norman Foster as the “mother of all modern airports,” was built in 1936 as a symbol of Nazi ambition—marking the entry point into Hitler’s capital with the largest building in Europe at the time. After the fall of Germany, it became instrumental in bringing supplies and connecting West Berlin with the Western world as the military base for the Berlin Airlift. Since then it has again been a public airport and for several years a refugee camp; Berlin is now trying to establish a new use for it.
Defined by its repetitive limestone facade, the airport’s association with the modern age and intention as a place of timely travel come with a compulsive sense of order. Tempelhof Tks 5 & 7 capitalizes on these associations to reinterpret the Rape of the Sabine Women and critique the story’s propelling forces of compulsive masculinity, and also of modernity.
The flight information screens, the constant revolution of a baggage carousel, the rotation of these men, the rhythm of their shoes, and the wall clock work to emphasize time and order in this project. But the activity it drives feels discordant and aimless. The men mill about, no one picks up a bag, and no one gets on a plane. The rush and routine is a staged performance in a grand space, yet it is filled with missteps and disharmony. As time ticks on in this architecturally grand site so centered around pageantry and spectacle, these missteps read like cracks in a facade.
Tatiana Jackson-Saitz is a fourth year undergraduate at the University of Chicago studying English Language & Literature and Environmental & Urban Studies.
