"To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout of what has never been."
René Magritte
22/11/2012
21/11/2012
location - market
After realizing what I was (more or less) looking for and determining the way I can work it out I started looking for a suitable location, very precise and appropriate to do so.
While I was reading an essay about the connection between the surreal movement and the commercial world I found out this interesting paragraph written by one of the most perceptive critics of the S., Walter Benjamin. He defines the way the surrealists critique the emergencing consumer world by conducting an archeology of the very things against which the novelty of commerce kicked: YESTERDAY'S MODERNITY.
They explored what he termed the 'ruins of the bourgeoise' through a recuperation of the unfashionable and the recently outmoded. He looked at the Surrealism as a movement which firstly sift through 'the field of debris left behind by the capitalist development of the forces of production', whose chief innovation was an 'unrelenting confrontation of the recent past with the present moment'.
From this perspective, the attraction of obsolete design styles, or an interest in the commodity system of the past represented for them a critical and indeed political strategy which, in a way, justifies their position about this topic (which might be seen as a direct violation of its spirit).
In other words they looked at the retail world not for new things, but for new eyes with which to re-envision and understand afresh both the world one had just lived through and its ideological legacies.
Following this point of view, which I totally agree with, I keept going through this essay until I came across to their strict interest to what they termed TROUVAILLE.
It literally means 'discovery' and it meant so much to Breton and his colleagues because they concentrated on the power of the chance encounter to crystalize and reveal the relationship between subjective desire and the real's external necessity. They formulated this process as 'OBJECTIVE CHANCE' in 1930's.
The defining habitat of the trouvaille was the FLEA MARKETS, haunted by Breton and his friends in search of 'those objects you find nowhere else, old-fashioned, broken, useless, almost incomprehensible'.
While I was reading an essay about the connection between the surreal movement and the commercial world I found out this interesting paragraph written by one of the most perceptive critics of the S., Walter Benjamin. He defines the way the surrealists critique the emergencing consumer world by conducting an archeology of the very things against which the novelty of commerce kicked: YESTERDAY'S MODERNITY.
They explored what he termed the 'ruins of the bourgeoise' through a recuperation of the unfashionable and the recently outmoded. He looked at the Surrealism as a movement which firstly sift through 'the field of debris left behind by the capitalist development of the forces of production', whose chief innovation was an 'unrelenting confrontation of the recent past with the present moment'.
From this perspective, the attraction of obsolete design styles, or an interest in the commodity system of the past represented for them a critical and indeed political strategy which, in a way, justifies their position about this topic (which might be seen as a direct violation of its spirit).
In other words they looked at the retail world not for new things, but for new eyes with which to re-envision and understand afresh both the world one had just lived through and its ideological legacies.
Following this point of view, which I totally agree with, I keept going through this essay until I came across to their strict interest to what they termed TROUVAILLE.
It literally means 'discovery' and it meant so much to Breton and his colleagues because they concentrated on the power of the chance encounter to crystalize and reveal the relationship between subjective desire and the real's external necessity. They formulated this process as 'OBJECTIVE CHANCE' in 1930's.
The defining habitat of the trouvaille was the FLEA MARKETS, haunted by Breton and his friends in search of 'those objects you find nowhere else, old-fashioned, broken, useless, almost incomprehensible'.
 |
| Saitn-Ouen marché aux puces, Paris, 1930 |
16/11/2012
layers
I started thinking about layers and how they work in our mind, how we perceive them and how we deal with them.
If I want to create estrangement in someone's mind then I think I might start from something we understand, like, what is better then our reality?
I've never passed by a mirrored window, but whenever they sun light is properly projected on the glass of it and you can see yourself projected, then you can't resist, you have to watch and check if everything is ok.
People have no idea of how they look like to the others, but I think they really would know that.
There is a sort of vanity in how we behave within society and public spaces.
But the point is: do people know how they look like to themselves?
Are they aware of who they are and what they want whenever they decide to buy something?
Are they seriously under control of they actions? Or maybe they are just following the conventional procedures of the modern retail world? BUY BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO?
What if you are in the middle of a topsy-turvy room? How would feel? What would you think?
As long as our reactions to this process differ far form each other I thought the best way to project you in a place like that would be in a kind of box, an enclosed space where you are just by yourself. A place where you can have the proper intimacy to experience your unconsciousness and imagination to give a reason to the place in which you are projected and to play with it as much as you like.
I reckon that playing with the public identity might be quite tricky to be managed, but I also think that create something playful and imaginative in a world where the main stress is just on a very static scenario of selling and selling would be something interesting and innovative.
From this point I made some tests about people, public spaces, showcases and I recorded them, randomly around London.
These are the outcome of what I was testing out.
COS
METRO
ANTHROPOLOGIE
ST. PAUL
SELFRIDGES
I made a model as well to fully determine the distances I need to film someone and the to project him on a background and I came up with these shapes.
True a kind of tunnel people can see though the mirrored window and watch the projections on the background of the box.
The window is mirrored to reflect the real world we live in and to isolate and hide to second layer underneath. That layer is the background for the projection of the surreal layer.
▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢
It is clear, by now, after deep analysis of the surreal movement and its own consideration about the present society, that it is essentially opposed to capitalism and commerce.
Because of that I started a new research about its possible implication within the retail and commercial world and I surprisingly found out that Surrealism is one of the key words of visual merchandising and shop windows design.
In fact, looking at the movement under the lens of the desire and marvellous's research it is possible to reconsider it under another light, more close to commerce and materialism.
Indeed André Breton, founding 'First Manifesto of Surrealism' repeatedly stressed the intention not simply to reject the real world's bankrupt stock, but to rediscover its true nature in the light of imagination and the unconscious 'the future resolution of these two state dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.'
Surrealism's position in the world, then, is secured through a realignment of our understanding of the real by means of kind of passionate critical participation.
I think that if I play with the spectator/customer's unconsciousness (making him self-conscious of himself as a body, as a perceiving subject), I will allow him to became more socially and psychologically involved within his experience of purchasing and watching.
Viewed in this perspective, it might be possible to read Surrealism's problematic relationship with its commercial context in a more sophisticated way.
In the research for the marvellous discovered the real experience, the French Surrelist group's first generation entertained a particular fascination with the encounters generated by chance during their day-to-day flanerie around the street of Paris.
I particularly focused on an artist, who was actually american, and his series of boxes assemblages.
I am talking about Joseph Cornell whose life-long flanerie of Manhattan's streets in search of books, photographs and records found objects was in empathy with the spirit of Parisian Surrealism.
Everybody, looking through the same "glass", the same layer, the reality, makes his own personal synthesis of what he's just seen. While walking down the street people are unconsciously gaining images of the world around. I think, in a conceptual way, the place where we store those images is a kind of box, likewise Cornell's boxes, in which we project our own interpretation and view.
I was wondering: what might happen if a person, in the very middle of this collecting process, was projected literally, inside one of those boxes?
What would happen if that person didn't have kind of control inside this box? I am talking about the very wrong scale size of him or the objects inside it, the time in there, the sound.
Is that possible that the understanding of ourself resulted indeed from a total loss of control?
Because of that I started a new research about its possible implication within the retail and commercial world and I surprisingly found out that Surrealism is one of the key words of visual merchandising and shop windows design.
In fact, looking at the movement under the lens of the desire and marvellous's research it is possible to reconsider it under another light, more close to commerce and materialism.
Indeed André Breton, founding 'First Manifesto of Surrealism' repeatedly stressed the intention not simply to reject the real world's bankrupt stock, but to rediscover its true nature in the light of imagination and the unconscious 'the future resolution of these two state dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.'
Surrealism's position in the world, then, is secured through a realignment of our understanding of the real by means of kind of passionate critical participation.
I think that if I play with the spectator/customer's unconsciousness (making him self-conscious of himself as a body, as a perceiving subject), I will allow him to became more socially and psychologically involved within his experience of purchasing and watching.
Viewed in this perspective, it might be possible to read Surrealism's problematic relationship with its commercial context in a more sophisticated way.
In the research for the marvellous discovered the real experience, the French Surrelist group's first generation entertained a particular fascination with the encounters generated by chance during their day-to-day flanerie around the street of Paris.
I particularly focused on an artist, who was actually american, and his series of boxes assemblages.
I am talking about Joseph Cornell whose life-long flanerie of Manhattan's streets in search of books, photographs and records found objects was in empathy with the spirit of Parisian Surrealism.
His boxes, subdivided into regular compartments containing nostalgic objects, might be seen as the very experience of the city. They suggest both the windowed facades of New York skyline, the department store vetrines and the grid of blocks that make up the Cornell's beat of Midtown and Uptown Manhattan, the very way in which a traveller on foot orients and experiences journeys across the city. Empty or filled compartments in these boxes suggest a diary of journey in search of junk shop and dime stores, where some block yield nothing while others offer un unexpected treasure.
While I was studying his body of work I pictured in my mind a structure which reassume a world of different traveller. If I think about people walking down the streets in London nowadays I can only recall a crowd with lack of attention for what is surrounding them. People today, especially in a city such as London, fast, full of spurs and possibilities, I can only see people with lack of attention. They are just very interested in following the current modern consumption. They are all under control of the mass marketing style; they don't purchase anymore for a real necessity, they purchase just because of the necessity of possession.
Everybody, looking through the same "glass", the same layer, the reality, makes his own personal synthesis of what he's just seen. While walking down the street people are unconsciously gaining images of the world around. I think, in a conceptual way, the place where we store those images is a kind of box, likewise Cornell's boxes, in which we project our own interpretation and view.
I was wondering: what might happen if a person, in the very middle of this collecting process, was projected literally, inside one of those boxes?
What would happen if that person didn't have kind of control inside this box? I am talking about the very wrong scale size of him or the objects inside it, the time in there, the sound.
Is that possible that the understanding of ourself resulted indeed from a total loss of control?
AM I ME?
IS THAT REAL?
AM I HUGE?
IS THAT VERY SMALL?
AM I ME?
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15/11/2012
Through the looking glass
After Robin suggested me to watch a movie (2001 a space odyssey) and while I was trying to find out something more subtle about my mind map, I ended up thinking a lot about this scene (even though i was supposed to focus my attention on another one, of course).
Apart from the plot, which is absolutely brilliant, and the music and the environment and so on, this scene really captured my attention.
As far as I am really fascinated by whatever concerns manipulated perception, spatial overturning and intellectual uncertainty I just left the house, looking for something existing which could allow me to really understand the feeling of the UPSIDE DOWN, spatially and mentally.
So, I went to the Saatchi Gallery, where I found an exhibition which was just waiting for me there.
It was an installation by the british artist Richard Wilson, called 20:50.
It is a site specific oil installation which has been previously created in 1987 for the Matt's Gallery.
It is impressive how its simplicity and singularity is actually the secret of its effectiveness.
He used a very simple material like the sump oil to create a very puzzling feeling within the beholder.
While i was taking pictures i went more and more deeply into the details of it and I realized, while doing so, that I was losing the perception of the space i was in.
If I turn the picture upside down, without having any other details of the room, I cannot really define which is the right side. I love the feeling of intellectual uncertainty it gives to me.
The structure seems to cut into a black plane, whose perfectly reflectivity surface mirrors the architecture of the room, betraying no depth or equality of its own.
He says about this installation:
"I have to go real thing and I'll manipulate it in some way - transform it so it is no longer functions in the way you expect it to. But I need that initial thing from the real world because I 've always been concerned with the way you can alter someone's perception, knock their view of the world off-kilter. And to do that I need to start with something we think we understand."
I think this is definitely impressive.
What is more effective that manipulating real things to create a feeling of uncertainty and uncanny?
I spent there so much time that the girls who were on duty, looking at the people into the gallery, asked me if I wasn't fed up enough with the bad smell of the sump oil.
I read a lot about this artist and i found out that to work on this project he read a novel by Lewis Carroll and he based his own research on this passage:
"But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little peep of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House!"
With this installation it seems that the artist challenge this passage like : "no, lets' not pretend, let's actually get through".
From this I started drawing down my own interpretation of this part of the novel and I ended up with this sketches.
As long as I've been always fascinated by what concerns the retail world, the way our behaviour is when we are in front of a window and even more on how the retail world is now set up. Are the windows at the moment a way to connect people with the showcase or they are just felt from the customer as a barrier?
Thinking about that I started connecting the surreal part of my research with this drawing and I turned out asking myself: what happen if looking through the looking glass, literally, we could be projected in a very surreal world, where the spatial overturning dominates the space, where all the objects we know have a different meaning, where we can fell free of use our own imagination to lead us to a more passionate critical participation during the act of observing and consequently of purchasing?
What if the box i drew can enclosed a world of our own?
So that I started researching about conceptual architecture of imaginative city and I discovered this french architect, Yona Friedman. He is more a theoretician rather than a real architect and I took his project calle Ville Spatiale to wide my research. Following some of his drawings about this project, which I personally took a s part of my development.
The project was a very anarchitectural idea of a city. It was in fact very conceptual and totally impracticable to be built, but the theory beyond that, was very helpful for me.
He talked about this project as an architecture available for a mobile society.This is why, in the mobile city, the buildings must :• touch the ground over a minimum area•be capable of being dismantled and moved•be alternate as required by the individual occupant.The structure reminds me of a place where to live without thinking about what is just underneath it. A moment of calm, where you are able not to dwell as you usually ahve to do. A kind of bodyscape scenario, in which people can live their live.The "boxes" are thought not to be determined nor determining, but they are the dwelling decided on by the occupant.
I worked in particular on this drawing and I manipulated it, thinking about the retail world and how it works in term of functionality.
I ended up with turning it upside down, asking myself, what if the ground in his drawing became a layer in mines? And even more, what if his city, became my box of our own, where to project that unfamiliar reality I was talking before?
I want to use the column as a way to look through the glass, and to actually go through it.
And then, as long as I totally agree with the fact that to kick our view of the world off-kilter we have to start from something we think we understand.. then..what is more understandable than our own reality?
So, what if the layer (which was the ground for him) through which someone is looking was a mirror? what if it reflected the real world but it hid another surreal world?
Apart from the plot, which is absolutely brilliant, and the music and the environment and so on, this scene really captured my attention.
As far as I am really fascinated by whatever concerns manipulated perception, spatial overturning and intellectual uncertainty I just left the house, looking for something existing which could allow me to really understand the feeling of the UPSIDE DOWN, spatially and mentally.
So, I went to the Saatchi Gallery, where I found an exhibition which was just waiting for me there.
It was an installation by the british artist Richard Wilson, called 20:50.
It is a site specific oil installation which has been previously created in 1987 for the Matt's Gallery.
It is impressive how its simplicity and singularity is actually the secret of its effectiveness.
He used a very simple material like the sump oil to create a very puzzling feeling within the beholder.
While i was taking pictures i went more and more deeply into the details of it and I realized, while doing so, that I was losing the perception of the space i was in.
If I turn the picture upside down, without having any other details of the room, I cannot really define which is the right side. I love the feeling of intellectual uncertainty it gives to me.
The structure seems to cut into a black plane, whose perfectly reflectivity surface mirrors the architecture of the room, betraying no depth or equality of its own.
He says about this installation:
"I have to go real thing and I'll manipulate it in some way - transform it so it is no longer functions in the way you expect it to. But I need that initial thing from the real world because I 've always been concerned with the way you can alter someone's perception, knock their view of the world off-kilter. And to do that I need to start with something we think we understand."
I think this is definitely impressive.
What is more effective that manipulating real things to create a feeling of uncertainty and uncanny?
I spent there so much time that the girls who were on duty, looking at the people into the gallery, asked me if I wasn't fed up enough with the bad smell of the sump oil.
I read a lot about this artist and i found out that to work on this project he read a novel by Lewis Carroll and he based his own research on this passage:
"But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little peep of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House!"
With this installation it seems that the artist challenge this passage like : "no, lets' not pretend, let's actually get through".
From this I started drawing down my own interpretation of this part of the novel and I ended up with this sketches.
As long as I've been always fascinated by what concerns the retail world, the way our behaviour is when we are in front of a window and even more on how the retail world is now set up. Are the windows at the moment a way to connect people with the showcase or they are just felt from the customer as a barrier?
Thinking about that I started connecting the surreal part of my research with this drawing and I turned out asking myself: what happen if looking through the looking glass, literally, we could be projected in a very surreal world, where the spatial overturning dominates the space, where all the objects we know have a different meaning, where we can fell free of use our own imagination to lead us to a more passionate critical participation during the act of observing and consequently of purchasing?
What if the box i drew can enclosed a world of our own?
So that I started researching about conceptual architecture of imaginative city and I discovered this french architect, Yona Friedman. He is more a theoretician rather than a real architect and I took his project calle Ville Spatiale to wide my research. Following some of his drawings about this project, which I personally took a s part of my development.
He talked about this project as an architecture available for a mobile society.This is why, in the mobile city, the buildings must :• touch the ground over a minimum area•be capable of being dismantled and moved•be alternate as required by the individual occupant.The structure reminds me of a place where to live without thinking about what is just underneath it. A moment of calm, where you are able not to dwell as you usually ahve to do. A kind of bodyscape scenario, in which people can live their live.The "boxes" are thought not to be determined nor determining, but they are the dwelling decided on by the occupant.
I worked in particular on this drawing and I manipulated it, thinking about the retail world and how it works in term of functionality.
I ended up with turning it upside down, asking myself, what if the ground in his drawing became a layer in mines? And even more, what if his city, became my box of our own, where to project that unfamiliar reality I was talking before?
I want to use the column as a way to look through the glass, and to actually go through it.
And then, as long as I totally agree with the fact that to kick our view of the world off-kilter we have to start from something we think we understand.. then..what is more understandable than our own reality?
So, what if the layer (which was the ground for him) through which someone is looking was a mirror? what if it reflected the real world but it hid another surreal world?
being john malkovich
Thinking about imagination and how we deal with our own point of view of the world we live in I watched a movie which is all about this topic.
When the main character finds the portal, which is a tiny door hidden by some document drawers, he gets through it and experiences the swap of his personality with another, being for 15 minutes a movie star. The choice of a famous actor as a mind to stay in for a while is incredibly proper with the features of the protagonist. He is in fact a puppeteer and he usually deals with dolls to be in someone else skin for a while.
I think it is something everybody thinks about, but they just don't say it out loud. Everybody has a desire of being someone else some times, but it is something awkward to say. It might mean dissatisfaction and insecurity.
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
It is written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. It came out in 1999 and the plot, very summurized, is the story of a puppeteer who discovered a portal that leads literally into the head of the movie star, John Malkovich.
First of all the story takes place in a very weird location: the seven and a half floor. I found it absolutely brilliant. It allows the watcher to imagine a world of his own, where the common rules do not have a real value. A place totally detached from reality. That floor was built expressly for a dwarf who was looking for a job in the company which owns the building. She said during her interview:
TW: I am not a child, Captain Mertin
but rather an adult lady of
miniature proportions.
I am afraid that the world was not
built with me in mind.
Door knobs are too high, chairs
are unwieldy, high-ceilinged rooms
mock my stature.
When the main character finds the portal, which is a tiny door hidden by some document drawers, he gets through it and experiences the swap of his personality with another, being for 15 minutes a movie star. The choice of a famous actor as a mind to stay in for a while is incredibly proper with the features of the protagonist. He is in fact a puppeteer and he usually deals with dolls to be in someone else skin for a while.
I think it is something everybody thinks about, but they just don't say it out loud. Everybody has a desire of being someone else some times, but it is something awkward to say. It might mean dissatisfaction and insecurity.
When he talks with someone about his experience of being someone else he is really shaken and he says:
C : The point is that this is a very odd thing, supernatural,for lack of a better word. It raises all sorts of philosophical questions about the nature of self, about the existence of the soul. Am I me? Is Malkovich Malkovich? Was the Buddha right, is duality an illusion? Do you see what a can of worms this portal is? I don't think I can go on living my life as I have lived it.
This is a way very effective way to create an uncanny feeling in someone: am I me?
AM I ME?
IS THAT ME?
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