Tracing the Decay of Fiction

This interactive installation is based on O’Neills The Decay of Fiction (see previous entry). Visitors to the installation, that is on show in V2, can roam through the historic Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles that is about to be demolished. The building served as location for many films (noir), J. Edgar Hoover was a regular guest and the Cocoanut Grove Bar was the starting point for many Hollywood careers: Joan Crawford was discovered there during a dance contest and Marilyn Monroe won a beauty contest in swimming suit.The hotel rooms will be shown on three large screens. Sometimes they are the same spaces, sometimes they differ. Visitors can use three mice to influence the storylines: they can decide whether the rooms are empty or inhabited by ghostlike figures and mysterious voices. It’s also possible to navigate through countless archive shots of the hotel and its surroundings, narrated by historians. The combined navigation of the visitors, along with the sound effects in the background, evoke an intriguing and seductive web of fiction, documentary and urban myths.