Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

At any given moment, we’re surrounded by evidence of past eras along with present.  Architectural design and urban planning change slowly despite tumultuous changes in history, politics and government. But over the course of a generation change is evident.

How to document and convey this change? Well, a new art installation combining 35 mm film and architectural photography does just that. Filmed footage of structures built in 1983 are projected alongside images of buildings from 2012. The film snakes it’s way through the former East and West Berlin, through strip malls, warehouses, Stalinist blocs and private homes. This is a movie but it’s not like any film you’ve seen before. It’s a spectacle of the ordinary.

It’s called Berlin 2012/1983, and is opening today at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
Created by celebrated Sobey award-winning artists Daniel Young and Christian Giroux, the “film” is two hours long. It slowly projects 9 frames per image, one second each, with each discrete image separated by the flickering of a shutter, and the two projectors synchronized to show each pair of images simultaneously.

I spoke with Daniel Young in Toronto to find out more about Berlin 2012/1983.