David Claerbout: Olympia

_Olympia_ is a computer-generated replica of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, which finds itself in a time-space devoid of human intervention and entrusted to the cycles of nature. Following the original “ruinenwert” theory, in which the stadium’s own decay has been pre-incorporated, Olympia invokes a cycle of creation to dissolution by the slow force of nature. Although the human element has been removed, it is re-introduced through the work’s synchronicity with our own life cycle. _Olympia_ can be regarded as an attempt to measure biological duration against imaginary duration. By “biological duration” one can understand the lifespan of a human being, and by “imaginary duration” one can understand ideological time: the illusion to witness one thousand years.