Empire poster

Empire

2014 · 11 min

not streaming

Empire (2014) is a direct reference to Andy Warhol’s eponymous 1964 film, which consists of a single eight-hour-long shot of the Empire State Building. In Bacher’s film, images of the iconic skyscraper—illuminated by twinkling red, white, and blue lights—are fragmented through plexiglass prisms, turning a symbol of American modernism into something unruly, unstable, and fugitive. The images lose integrity each time they are refracted or reflected. Paired with a discordant soundtrack, this work creates a hallucinatory spectacle suggestive of an era of deep uncertainty, marked by climate change and sociopolitical turmoil. [Overview courtesy of MoMA]

Crew

  • Director Lutz Bacher

Crew

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🔥 Hot takes

warming up the wall…

Intermission

GO DEEPER

Turn the obscurity dial up. There's a lot further down to go.

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