“the floor all around me” by Susanne Bürner

2024 · FR/DE · colour · En · 13’ · Swiss premiere · In competition

In a 1970s cast concrete housing complex in Bordeaux, people interact with the buildings in a playful way attuned to the rhythm of the space, turning the concrete structures into active counterparts in a shared choreography.

“the floor all around me” combines scenes in which various protagonists physically interact with the architecture of Mériadeck, a 1970s housing estate built on two levels in a Bordeaux neighborhood. They incorporate the buildings as obstacles, mirrors or stages into their exercises. The architecture becomes a protagonist in itself and sets the rhythm for their movements, turning the estate into an inclusive and symbiotic setting for living organisms and the built environment.
The editing suggests the simultaneity of the performances and opens up perspectives on ever new scenes. The layered structure of the film is brought to the fore by the curtain-like video transitions.
The sound by the composer Eliav Brand is made up of local noises that form the rhythm of both, the performances and the Mériadeck estate.

The artist

Susanne Bürner’s artistic practice explores the body and the surrounding architectural or natural space. Her works play with truth and illusion, presence and absence, and references to the ‘off-frame’ – the space outside the image.
Her take on different perspectives and raise questions about the systems of perception and social structures within which we find ourselves. She broadens the scope of our perception, moving away from a hierarchical viewpoint towards marginalized emotions, living beings and objects that hold the potential for alternative possibilities. Her images convey the fragility of human identity and our complex search for direction.
Susanne Bürner lives and works in Berlin. Her works have been shown at the Los Angeles Film forum, CAPC Bordeaux, Lajevardi Foundation Tehran, Fondazione Morra Greco Naples, Hygiene Museum Dresden, Kiasma Museum Helsinki, Kunstraum Kreuzberg and others.