A heap of broken glass swept together with a broom; the feet and legs of those present, filmed from the floor perspective – this is all there is to see in Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s video Always After (The Glass House). It is not revealed to the viewer what exactly has happened or where exactly the scene is taking place. The only thing certain – as suggested by the title – is that the viewer has arrived too late: Instead of an action, he sees its result; instead of an intact building, he sees its shattered remains. The path leading back from these traces of destruction to their assumed source is blocked. One can only make assumptions.

Always After (The Glass House) is the fifth video produced by Manglano-Ovalle, filmed in the architect’s Crown Hall in Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) during a festive ceremony marking the beginning of restoration work, focussing on the architecture of Mies van der Rohe. Manglano-Ovalle plays with the relics of Modernism and the ruins of 20th-century utopias, both with regard to the theme and the lack of transparency in the structure of the film itself.

What remains of the former ideal of complete transparency expressed by van der Rohe’s steel and glass architecture is little more than a heap of shards. The artist contrasts the claim to the acquisition of complete knowledge on the basis of logical argumentation with a space of possibility and dif- fuse supposition: He makes palpable a state of constant lateness, thus creating an image for a present that can find its future only in a fragmentary view of the past, which in turn is overladen with visions of the future.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, who was born in 1961 in Madrid, lives in Chicago, where he studied at the Art Institute. He has widely exhibited his works and received the New York Award for Excellence in Design in 2005.