Stepping through the front door of Bus Projects and being met by Darren Sylvester’s Céline, I am reminded of Anna Viebrock’s set design for the exhibition The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied at the Fondazione Prada in Venice. Viebrock, a stage designer by trade, was invited by curator Udo Kittelman to take part in the exhibition alongside Thomas Demand and Alexander Kluge. She completely transformed the site of the Fondazione Prada, and visitors could peer through the door of an apparent hotel entrance, or walk through a meeting room of Trump’s White House. The viewer was transported to another world. However, while these sets were believable right down to the most minute detail—the hotel entrance even had a Demand ‘decorating’ its hallway—there was a major element that betrayed the true nature of these constructions: and that was that the entirety of most sets could be completely circumnavigated by the viewer, thus allowing them to see the support structure—the trusses and beams—at the rear of the sets. One might say that the structural aspects of the sets were just as important as their illusory aspects; they were required to undo the fallacy of the presented narrative.
