With: Daniel Reuter
Foley Artist: Martin Langenbach
Sound Design: Christian Obermaier

"HABITAT C3B" was filmed in 2008 in the district of 'Front de Seine' (also known as Beaugrenelle) in the 15th arrondissement right at the South of the Eiffel Tower. The district, built in the 1970s, is a result of Georges Pompidou's attempt to modernize the city. It includes about 20 towers reaching nearly 100 meters of height built all around an elevated espalanade paved with frescos that can only be perceived from the elevated floors of the towers. Largely fallen into disrepair, the City of Paris has launched a major project to renovate 'Front de Seine'.

"During his stay in the 'Pavillon, Laboratoire de création de Palais de Tokyo', Niklas Goldbach concentrated on the transit spaces of Paris. In “HABITAT C3B”, his characters are trapped in a public space, behaving like animals out of a cage. In front of these large long takes where the only movement is the one of the body, the spectator wonders about the place and role of these strange living creatures: are they here to control us like militias, or, on the contrary, are they controlled beings, the reflects of an entirely standardized society? Niklas Goldbach immerses us into his questionings, but never tries to solve them: nothing matters but the action that is occurring in front of our eyes.”
(Ange Leccia, director of the Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris)

"Themes of conceptual repetition and displacement are central to the video work of Niklas Goldbach. The phenomenal context frames the disorienting effect set up by a story that has no beginning or end. In Habitat C3B we find a phenomenological non-narrative that presents itself as sequential repetitive events of both actions and participant, and whose meaning and comprehension is left largely to the viewer. In a world that is now overwhelmingly mediated by images the videos of Goldbach present a sense of fragmented punctum, a partial sensory poignancy that becomes a self fulfilling end in itself. Today we increasingly build our picture of the world (habitat) from the part-narrative of purely sensory experiences such as these."

Mark Gisbourne