Ruhr

The film is made of seven static shots taken in the Ruhr region of Germany. The camera never moves; each shot stays where it is put. The places are these: a tunnel on Matena street, a steelworks, the wood beside Düsseldorf airport, the Merkez mosque in Marxloh, a sculpture by Richard Serra, a residential street and a coking plant. The first six shots take up about an hour. The remaining hour is given over to the chimney of the coking plant. James Benning found the locations by sending his students out to look and to listen. This is the first work he made outside the United States. The hundred and twenty two minute film was completed in 2009.