In keeping with Julia Born’s analysis of the city’s multifaceted fabric through the lens of wall inscriptions found in urban space, the epic travelogue Roman Variations (1991) by a French artist Michel Auder—known for his pioneering use of video in his montages of diaristic fragments that mix various characters, multiple locations and crisscrossing timelines—will be screened in Born’s exhibition All Capitals in the IN-DESIGN room.

A fleeting presence of moving image adds another, changing layer to the official inscriptions, advertising signs, anonymous scribbles and imprints from different eras in Rome’s history that Julia Born located in course of her research and transferred to walls of the gallery. Likewise, Auder’s homage to Rome’s decadence and splendor was realised during the artist’s one-year residency in the Italian capital—both works were made of perceptions gathered in situ. 

In Auder’s film, the city is captured from different angles and perspectives by a sophisticated eye: the camera connects the monuments of Rome and its everyday life with cheap erotica filmed directly from the TV screen at the dawn of the Berlusconi era. The screening will be followed by a conversation between Julia Born and curator Adam Szymczyk. Together with the writer and editor Quinn Latimer, Auder, Born and Szymczyk realized the book Stories, Myths, Ironies, and Other Songs: Conceived, Directed, Edited, and Produced by M. Auder (Kunsthalle Basel/Sternberg Press, 2014), which also includes a catalogue raisonné of Auder’s video works edited until 2014.