Six Apartments
(Reynold Reynolds, 2007)
Two screen video projection loop transferred from 16mm with a duration of 12min.


Six Apartments is a poetic document of decline and deterioration—both physical and ideal, hypnotic and melancholic. Six isolated occupants of six different apartments live their lives unaware of each other. Without drama they eat food, wander between rooms, bathe, watch television, and sleep. For them, this is life.

Yet whilst it may appear that nothing is happening here, the apartment building and its inhabitants' bodies are aging, giving way to bacteria, larva, and finally transformation. Televisions and radios tell them about the destruction of the whole planet but it does not effect their lives. Everything is in a state of resolute conversion. Immense drama does exist: chaos overcomes order; rot supersedes life; small destroys large. The occupants' lives are sinking slowly towards death according to the deliberate, methodical rhythms of their uniform days. This insistent erosion of bodies, building, and planet however, also reveals the ever active potential of death and its material processes.

An old woman is playing cards; she is dying. A man is listening to the radio; discomposed interiors of activity relentlessly eat away at him. All of the tenants are victims of the realities of physical deterioration as well as of their own psychological attempts to accept the attendant struggle with death. In their passivity and isolation, the inhabitants emerge as the true form of death, while the rooms they inhabit maintain the ongoing transformation of life. The potential of life, then, exists only in the process of death. Eventually all forms of life are consumed by new life. The implacability of decay results in an explosion of life.

Reynolds' Six Apartments sustains a mood of hopelessness, or perhaps more optimistically, one of melancholia, and even if the occupants remain unaware, the viewer sees: in death lies a great activity of life. One wonders if this might be a positive sign for the planet.


Six Apartments Credits

Clean Woman Cornelia Brelowski
Biker Wolfram Von Staufenberg
Sick Girl Johanna Kunig
Woman Edith Hermann
TV Man Norbert Decker
Messy Michael Arndt Gastaud

Produced by Pierre Düsing
                   Lina Schuller
                   Marcela H. Polgar

Cinematography by Kenzo Guzman
Camera and Electrical Carlos A. Lopez
Production Design Daniele Fermani
Set Dresser Andreas Böttger
Set Construction Mark Preuss
Yves Boczek

Art Department for Clean Woman and Biker
Samuel Hof
Friederike Donath
Jelena Nagorni
Eva Swoboda

Post-Production
Visual Effects Supervisor Carlos Vasquez
Digital Artist Cristóbal León
3D Digital Artist Joulia Strauss
Photo Artist Matilda Mester
Management Susen Hermann

Additional Cinematography Carlos Vasquez
                                          Daniele Fermani
Additional Post-Production Letizia Mariotti

Film to Video Transfer
16mm-New York Du Art
16mm-Berlin das werk
Colorist Phil Whitfield
S8mm Screen Shot Berlin

Video Capture Berlin
Fabian Dittmann
Michael Labus

Sound Design Reynold Reynolds
Sound Effects Editor Claudia Neri
Sound Recordist Sam Auinger
Dany Scheffler

Special Thanks To
Filipa César
Friederike Oberlin
Taylor Van Horne
Sacatar Foundation Brazil
Stacey Steers