The world’s longest film is currently on show in Helsinki, Finland as part of the city’s annual Contemporary Art Festival, IHME. Created by satirical artists Superflex, the 240-hour production tracks the potential transformation of the Stora Enso Building in the capital and is displayed in close proximity to the physical structure so that the audience can compare the two visual stimulants.
The one-off screening of Modern Times Forever (Stora Enso Building, Helsinki) commenced yesterday evening at 8pm local time and will continue until the climax of the film at 9pm on Saturday 2nd April. Projected onto a 40 sq m LED screen in Helsinki Market Square, the thought-provoking production depicts the fictitious alterations of the Stora Enso Building (also known as the ‘Sugar Cube’) over the next few thousand years, following the structure’s gradual decay as a result of changing weather conditions and the natural passing of time.
Art-based news site 'e-flux' describes Modern Times Forever (Stora Enso Building, Helsinki) as adding ‘a new temporal dimension to the urban space’, noting that ‘the film’s time races ahead at an estimated several-hundred-year gallop each day’.
The team behind the project, Superflex is known for their surreal, abstract compositions such as ‘Flooded MacDonalds’, a video production which tracks the gradual flooding of a replicated fast food establishment, and the more recent ‘A Cockroach’s Tour of the London Science Museum’, created as part of Science Museum Arts Projects Script by Nikolaj Heltoft.
