A telephone rings unanswered. In an architecture and urban planning office, employees sleep over their designs while outside, cranes follow a mechanical rhythm. People lose control, yet the systems continue running undeterred, as though the city had long since detached itself from its planners.

In Verplant, Julian Irlinger presents the animated films The Curtain of Time (2025) and Chronotopia (2026) alongside specially designed lanterns. Conceived as seamless loops, the films do not follow a linear narrative. Rather than the characters, it is grids, interiors, and architecture that determine the course of events and shape the films’ distinctive visual language.

Irlinger’s visual worlds modify the form and structure of postwar animated and instructional films. Clean lines, flat colors, and minimal movement once stood for progress, orientation, and social renewal. At the same time, this visual language was used in educational films, advertising, and propaganda. What appears light,…