Every Epoch Dreams the Next / various media / 2025

Cities are subject to constant change. Power structures change ideological concepts, systems and epochs. Citizen participation collides with the logic of experts, politics, and the capitalist market. The central element of the exhibition 'Every Epoch Dreams the Next' is the eponymous film. In this film, a dreamlike scene from a 1970s Albanian feature film collides with a 3D-generated boy who drifts through a modern city in a dreamlike manner. The film explores dreams as spaces of action, where historical and social inscriptions, transformations, and connections between different eras and systems converge. The exhibition combines this film with other works that explore imaginary spaces, moments of resistance, and the utopian potential of cities and their inhabitants.

The work “This Kind of Feeling” alludes to graffiti text on a construction site barrier in Tirana. This object, including the inscription, was integrated into the exhibition. It draws attention to current urban development projects that are driven by capitalist logic and implemented without the involvement or participation of the local population, and takes this inscription as a reflective layer as “This Kind of Feeling.

‘Nobody Said it's Going to be Easy’ is a collaborative work by Johannes Gierlinger and Eros Dibra. The work deals with protest signs against construction projects as well as stock images of people used in advertisements for construction projects in Albania. Through an interplay of light and shadow, colour and text, this work attempts to provide a poetic interpretation of instruments of protest while simultaneously deconstructing the commercial promise of construction projects.

The slideshow ‘Unconscious Trace’ focuses on a film strip found on a construction site in front of the film archive in Tirana. This work combines the film strip with texts and images, superimposing them like layers of memory and referring to dreams, historical and contemporary scars, and cinematic traces. It thereby establishes connections to history and the fragile narrative of its traces.

The exhibition ‘Every Epoch Dreams the Next’ explores how cityscapes change in the wake of power shifts, and how power structures can override the common good and the interests of the general public. It attempts to create a space for reflection on democratic developments, new and old regimes, propaganda and the accessibility of, and struggle for, public space.

Realisation by Johannes Gierlinger
3-D Renderings by Stefanie Schwarzwimmer
Music by Karolina Preuschl
Colors & Assistance by Mira Klug
Voice by Mara Chavez
Sound Mix by Peter Kutin

Funded by Bmkoes Media Art & MA7 Media Art

Installationview 'Every Epoch Dreams the Next' 
at INDUSTRA ART BRNO, 2025 

'This Kind of Feeling', Sculpture Installation  &  'Every Epoch Dreams the Next', Film, 18min, 2025

‘Unconscious Trace’, 80 Dia Positiv Frames, 2025

'Nobody said it´s going to be easy' collaborative work, mixed media, 2025  &   'Unconscious Trace', 80 Dia Positiv Frames, 2025

Photos by © Mira Klug