In this work, Piper takes on the role of a designer/architect, projecting ideas around the organisation of urban space to ironically imagine a ‘perfect city’. He references the history of urban space through maps, medieval architectural illustrations, Pieter Bruegel’s painting The Tower of Babel (1563), contemporary skyscrapers and digital architectural drawings. Piper uses sequential narrative to tell the story of constructing and destroying his archetypal city in five stages, referring to biblical creation and apocalyptic allegories from the books of Genesis and Revelation. The video is a meditation on urban space, surveillance and control of the body, expressed through a distinctive voiceover, picking up themes and references from Piper’s earlier work. It provides a gateway towards the concerns of his contemporary practice.
