Real state

A visual essay—with text by Eleanor Ivory Weber—that takes a critical stance towards the subjects of housing, urban development and image production. Employing video-stills, photographs and found images, this volume explores the social and political value of the image, in a specifically urban context, emphasizing the fictions present in the (re)production of space.

As the content is framed and re-framed, trackpad gestures are overlaid, ultimately bringing the stability of all image surfaces into question. This destabilizing approach is mirrored in Weber’s text, which combines excerpts from e-mail conversations with differing registers of fiction, expanding on the disconnection between the idea of housing as a basic human need and it’s position within market logic and neoliberal ideology.

The title Real state alludes to the conditions of these systems, the power structures of governed entities, and the business of real estate, while insinuating a difficult promise of something real or true to be revealed.

Working with various mediums but predominantly with moving images and collage, Asta Meldal Lynge’s work explores the topos of the image. Much of the London-based Danish artist’s work is concerned with the constructs of image production relative to its creation and medium.

Design by Rory Gleeson with Asta Meldal Lynge

Published by Studio Operative, 2016
Printed in a limited edition of 600 copies

Softcover, 128 pages, full color offset, includes 16 die-cut pages, 8.5 × 11 in.