These Walls were built by Donald Judd (One chapter, in Texas)

When the medium of film beholds space, it conjoins space with temporality. Sasha Pirker duplicates this very potential in September of 2013 when she enters a future exhibition space originally purchased and developed by Donald Judd at the end of the 1970s, armed with her camera. For the duration of the film Pirker crisscrosses and explores the space, whereas a conversation is heard on the soundtrack, taking place between her and a man who could either be the curator of the exhibition rooms or custodian of the building. His account chronicles the original use of the space as a cattle yard – where animals were slaughtered and frozen, among other things – as well as its use as a gallery for artists. He thereby stresses a second temporal level, the history of the space, its transformation over the course of time.

In a mere six minutes, These Walls were built by Donald Judd explores multiple dimensions of the space, transitioning from the gallery as separate from the world to how it relates to the world. This relationship is manifested by past interior details present to this day, as well as the facade’s floor-to-ceiling windows that deliver a CinemaScope view of the park outside. There a seemingly endless train is seen passing by – the locomotive means of Modernity that bound the experience of time to space before the advent of film. And so it is that in the end our gaze is turned around: We peer out of the space at the film.
(Alejandro Bachmann)

Translation: Eve Heller