Bildraum

Apocalypse at a scale of 1:25, Bildraum is as startling a staging of environmental catastrophe as you’ll see. It reaps havoc on a model world, our model world, and sends us snapshots from the fallout.

Onstage, a series of white card models—luxury condos, council flats, institutional corridors and, crucially, the theatre itself—are photographed by Charlotte Brouckaert. Her shots become a slideshow, blown up on a big screen. These fragile white rooms become ghostly real estate – lifeless swimming pools and deserted classrooms, all eerily empty. Sounds of life play overhead.

Then comes the rain. Polystyrene hailstones rip through ceilings and dusty chunks of rubble and ash, destroying this fragile world. Thunderclaps crash through the space so that this teeny armageddon feels massive. Fields—scattered earth on a tabletop—become floodplains. Buildings become buried in snow. It’s like the LA of today as a latterday Pompeii. The destruction, of course, is entirely man-made.

The camera is key. We rely on it to make out the miniatures, but some of Brouckaert’s pictures don’t marry with the models. Equally, she selects what we see: lifestyle shots or less glam realities. Extend that to the environment and it begs the question of blind eyes. Art, as well, since these images are familiar – the stuff of disaster movies and scientific predictions. In that Bildraum questions its own purpose. Can it possibly make a difference? And how many such warnings will go unheeded?