Post Production
Felicity Hammond
(2018)
Post Production is a collaged print comprised of images from glossy brochures of real-estate companies together with photographs that Hammond has taken of Toronto’s skyline. Resembling the oversized advertisements found in public spaces, this para-fictional scenery cleverly plays on our desire for a glamorous urban life.
The work depicts a city horizon dense with tall buildings, part of which are covered with green corners that look almost artificial. Behind the windows of high-rise apartments, appear some people gazing at the city from a distant perspective, demonstrating how the factor of human-scale has been often forgotten in modern city planning. A purple color layers the print, thereby simulating an apocalyptic feeling of sinking into an endless field of urban construction. The used footages don’t refer to recognizable locations, but they rather reflect the growing structural homogeneity of cityscapes - as a result, of urban sprawl and real-estate projects.
The dialogue between the surrounding development aesthetics and their digitally modified visualization unravels a confused space between the real and the virtual. Such contrast corresponds with utopic and dystopic realms that coexist in proximity when it comes to urban planning. The work thus simulates a city whose buildings and facades shape our collective identity and design a specific future that is partially based on obliterated topographical history.