Rummel And The Amazing World Of Fairs
After all urban time-lapse videos I’ve seen over the past years, I don’t watch all of them any more, but this one is beautiful.
Rummel by Christoph Kalck is a beautiful video capturing the atmosphere and style of one of the very large Spring fairs in Germany, the Stuttgarter Frühlingsfest. Rummel is a colorful and bright showcase of a fairground, a maze of stalls and rides, shows and shops for about 1.4 million visitors, as UrbanTick explains it strikingly.
“Over three days Kalck has portrayed scenes in and around the fairground capturing the rumble and zumble, the moment of surprise, the laughter and excitement. Its the joy and the fun this blinking, moving, sweet and sticky scenery conveys. He stayed on though and kept looking, he arrived early and stayed late and the movie captures it all. The setting up, the pulling of the curtain, the setting sun and the glowing, blinking and bustling lights to the dinging of the action and the moments the lights come allowing for the staff to wrap up, clean and pack. Only for it all to start again the next day.”
By presenting the fair in all its color and happiness, Kalck has managed to create a thought-provoking video about human behavior. Without saying a word about it, Kalck somehow points to the dual experience of a fair. Fairs are meant to make us happy and feel like children again. No other place in the world seems to be so colorful, but at the same time, it’s all fake, which makes the whole show a little sad. Kalck has captured this sadness as well. His shots are great and almost too perfect to be true.
Kalck also sheds a light on the quite unknown and underestimated design typology of the fair. All the attractions, forms and signs are very well designed. They have an indirect effect on our moods, playing with our unconsciousness. In that sense the fair style is very intuitive and it backs upon a large tradition. Most ‘serious’ designers and lots of others don’t like the fair design style, as it is associated with lower class and its extreme overwhelmingness. But, without any doubt, it has quality. In Rummel this is shown in a brilliant way.
