MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI | JOACHIM KOESTER | RICHARD SERRA | RACHAEL WHITEREAD | ISABELLE HAYEUR

THE G'PSGOLOX POLE | JOCHEN GERZ & ESTHER SHALEV-GERZ | BANKSY | FRANCIS ALŸS | THE LARGE BAMIYAN BUDDHA

Enter this website to explore Cold Case, a virtual exhibition in which you can investigate a series of ten "crime scenes" using this website, Google Images, and Google Maps as your guide. Using the framework of the crime scene and the visual and textual evidence it implies, this virtual exhibition asks the question of how (or if) one can authentically experience something that can only exist virtually. The “somethings” it asks you to experience are predominantly site-specific artworks and cultural landmarks that have physically disappeared or transformed beyond recognition. Fleeting like the instance of a crime, the impermanent and intangible character of such sites may be defied by current virtual technologies. Taking advantage of various processes of reconstruction made possible by digital images and Google Maps, Cold Case offers you, as a participant-viewer, the opportunity to experience historical or no-longer existent cultural and artistic sites. Like a museum tour or pilgrimage to a series of remote sites, the path through Cold Case is mapped out and made accessible. However, it is only through an organically growing compilation of digital evidence and photo-documentation that each site, like the scene of a crime, becomes available. These sites are out of reach—both physically and temporally—but made available and rebuilt through the reconstructive and experiential powers of the virtual. Like crime scenes gone cold, the ten sites on this tour require reconstitution in order to be experienced. You must search for and compile evidence of their existence. [Click here to read the full 1500 word presentation essay]