Hell to Heaven, elevator pitch

Civilization, by Marco Brambilla, is a stunning video installation designed for the elevators of the Standard Hotel in New York.

“The video mural depicts a journey from Hell to Heaven interpreted through modern film language using computer-enhanced found footage,” writes Eric Melin who also compares this art+technology work with the epic visual narratives of the Garden of Earthly Delight by Hieronymus Bosch. “This epic video mural contains over 300 individual channels of looped video blended into a multi-layered seamless tableau of interconnecting images that illustrate a contemporary, satirical take on the concepts of Heaven and Hell.”

I like the idea of re-place-ing and re-playing this old, archetypical story in a hyper-modern context, and also enacting a dramatic Dante-like journey using a banal elevator. The most obvious reading of the journey is from Bottom to the Top (from the Past to the Future?), but in fact the spatial organization is more complex. Both Hell and Heave are the futures, and both are possible.

Wonder if they they heat the cabin when passing the Hell.