I wanted to keep things extremely simple, get the best view I could and let the camera run. I set it up in front of the Devonshire Hotel, which had been readied for demolition. With all the glass taken out of its windows, it appeared as a death mask with its eyes burnt out and blackened. When the gunpowder is released, the building collapses in extreme slow motion, its destruction obscured by the rising smoke. I used another ten-minute take, figuring how much I would need to get a preamble, the explosion, and then its aftermath. …The Devonshire was a classic old hotel, which was being destroyed to make way for a new office tower. What was unusual was that they weren’t simply going to dismantle it, but to use an implosion technique. …The smoke looks like ghosts leaving the building. This is underlined by the soundtrack that, like the image, was slowed down. I recorded onlookers whistling and shouts; once slowed it took on a strange, ethereal quality, like a wailing banshee. It was like the spirits of the hotel being released, finally freed. Vancouver used to be called Terminal City because it was on the end of the CPR rail line. The film foreshadows the end of our cities and civilization; it has an apocalyptic feeling.

An interview with Mike Hoolboom