Filipa CESAR

Discovering the absence of cinema in Bad Ems and the existence of an empty shop in the town's historic centre, Filipa César dreamed up the "Hotel" project. She transformed this site, a glassed-in parallelepidal resembling an aquarium, into a small cinema open to the view of passers-by. A giant-sized bed and red neon lighting gave it the status of a hotel room. The recurring hotel theme is found in the films projected. The artist's video Untitled 2002, which is also shown, was filmed with the aid of a rotating camera in an abandoned 1950's hotel in Bad Ems and shows views that evoke a barren landscape.
This work operates a reversal by offering the supposed intimacy of a hotel room to the view of passers-by. Lodged within the heart of a city popular with tourists, the work asks questions about the notion of "passing through" by leaving spectators free to enter or leave in order to take part in the projection from the inside or the outside.

After a short period of observation, Filipa César analysed the particular context of Bad Ems, a small German thermal town frequented mainly by tourists. Attentive to this "passing through" public, little aware of the contemporary artistic current, the artist has chosen to develop an accessible artistic project in an urban space .In addition to the two projects produced at Bad Ems, which were followed by the publication of a catalogue, the artist participated in an exhibition with the artists-in-residence at the Künstlerhaus Schloß Balmoral, which was organised in Prague in June 2002 at the Vaclava Spaly Gallery and then at the Kaiserslautern Frachthalle.