established

Accompanied by atmospheric music, fuzzy dots of light cover the picture, resembling the opening credits of a film which is just starting. But this film-within-a-film – actually a film-within-a-video – remains no more than an announcement, its establishing shot slowly peeling from the background in a long pan past façades of skyscrapers, rows of windows, steel skeletons, familiar structures.

Gradually the dots of light give way to a grid, its increasingly fine lines covering the picture. The levels block each other with their overlapping movements, the spaces encroaching upon one another. This repeats, still to the music´s accompaniment, which begins and then plays the same theme over and over as if in a loop. The music eventually returns to its beginning: Accompanied by a cello pizzicato, images of tall buildings which appear in a staccato rhythm are followed by a final zoom to the edge of a façade, and then it´s over.

The establishing shot – the very first in a film – defines the narrative space and provides us with a look at a new world, like a filmic "ur-scene." established removes the spell from this magic moment, but through its title rather than repetition of the shot. Everything has already been laid out in this world, everything conforms to a predominate order, the reason why established – the film – does not need to begin at all. (Claudia Slanar)

Translation: Steve Wilder