Keywords, Dualities, Utopias
19/04/2005
UTOPIA / FANTASY / IDEALISATION / MISRECOGNITION OF SIGNS / PSYCHOSIS / MADNESS / ALTERNATE REALITY / UNKNOWN STATE / ALTERNATE REALITY AS IDEALISED REALITY / LANGUAGE AS A TOOL FOR ORDER / ORDER- RANDOMNESS / LANGUAGE AS A TOOL FOR MULTIPLICITY / STATE AS METAPHOR
SPATIALISATION OF IDEALISATION:
Cosmological for IMPRACTICAL, ROMANTIC
Architectural for PRAGMATIC, REALIST
The Cosmic is unknowable, ineffable. The Architectural is constructible, within our grasp, realisable, finite.
An exploration of the nature of reality and representation. The Unreliable Narrator as a vehicle for political and social commentary.
(Spatially) The Unreliable Narrator/ Artist creates a [space] using elements of reality but enhancing it somewhat, making that new reality convincing enough to suspend disbelief in its improbability. Illusion and deception are used to enhance its convincing improbability.
Dualities
Text and image are different forms of language. Flatness and depth are different forms of representation.
I am for an art that tries to synthesise these forms of duality - that seeks to reconcile both forms of communication and picturing the world.
Some dualities are harder: abstraction with narration. Perhaps pictorial abstraction with linguistic narration?
Try to move into a more socially allied sphere, not just working with a few isolated dualities, for there are plenty of social dualities, the first being POWER/ POWERLESSNESS. Think of a zone of plausibility.
SOCIAL CO-OPERATION / MISANTHROPIC DESTRUCTION
Skewed romanticism of David Thorpe, structures of Utopia questioned in Thomas Struth.
What are common themes in most Utopias? Control. Uniformity of thought, action, a form of communism. Ally this with the dream of capitalism of a society of individual consumers.
Utopia: social cohesion, uniformity, peace, perfection, standardisation of thought, end to crime, sterility, cleanliness, strict regime, absolutism, dictatorship, eugenics, gene manipulation, control, surveillance.
The Control Room: installation of surveillance and manipulation. Space subjected to a strict regime. Numbers and mathematics in the hands of absolutist perfectionists.
Symmetry - of furniture, of monitors. Use complex shapes but perfect ones - e.g. pentangles, rhombidodecahedrons, etc. Look at Islamic art for inspiration.
Instruments - for cutting up the body - bodily control.
Tools - for control of architectural space.
Science and technology - control of matter. Ultimate dream is control of time. Perhaps with the ability to control matter at the quantum level will come the beginning of the control of time?
Use white - white lights, white furniture, white sheets of paper: efficiency, control, Utopian architecture - look at EUR again for architectural references but also look at contemporary sources, e.g. Apple computers, retro-futurism, etc., the white cube aesthetic.
Also: official stamps; bureaucracy; the 'banality of evil'; the need to sort, quantify, analyse, check, annotate, tabulate, shelve, file, index, probe, survey, inspect, decimalise, distil, synopsize, abbreviate, collate, measure, reposition and number.
SPATIALISATION OF IDEALISATION:
Cosmological for IMPRACTICAL, ROMANTIC
Architectural for PRAGMATIC, REALIST
The Cosmic is unknowable, ineffable. The Architectural is constructible, within our grasp, realisable, finite.
An exploration of the nature of reality and representation. The Unreliable Narrator as a vehicle for political and social commentary.
(Spatially) The Unreliable Narrator/ Artist creates a [space] using elements of reality but enhancing it somewhat, making that new reality convincing enough to suspend disbelief in its improbability. Illusion and deception are used to enhance its convincing improbability.
Dualities
Text and image are different forms of language. Flatness and depth are different forms of representation.
I am for an art that tries to synthesise these forms of duality - that seeks to reconcile both forms of communication and picturing the world.
Some dualities are harder: abstraction with narration. Perhaps pictorial abstraction with linguistic narration?
Try to move into a more socially allied sphere, not just working with a few isolated dualities, for there are plenty of social dualities, the first being POWER/ POWERLESSNESS. Think of a zone of plausibility.
SOCIAL CO-OPERATION / MISANTHROPIC DESTRUCTION
Skewed romanticism of David Thorpe, structures of Utopia questioned in Thomas Struth.
What are common themes in most Utopias? Control. Uniformity of thought, action, a form of communism. Ally this with the dream of capitalism of a society of individual consumers.
Utopia: social cohesion, uniformity, peace, perfection, standardisation of thought, end to crime, sterility, cleanliness, strict regime, absolutism, dictatorship, eugenics, gene manipulation, control, surveillance.
The Control Room: installation of surveillance and manipulation. Space subjected to a strict regime. Numbers and mathematics in the hands of absolutist perfectionists.
Symmetry - of furniture, of monitors. Use complex shapes but perfect ones - e.g. pentangles, rhombidodecahedrons, etc. Look at Islamic art for inspiration.
Instruments - for cutting up the body - bodily control.
Tools - for control of architectural space.
Science and technology - control of matter. Ultimate dream is control of time. Perhaps with the ability to control matter at the quantum level will come the beginning of the control of time?
Use white - white lights, white furniture, white sheets of paper: efficiency, control, Utopian architecture - look at EUR again for architectural references but also look at contemporary sources, e.g. Apple computers, retro-futurism, etc., the white cube aesthetic.
Also: official stamps; bureaucracy; the 'banality of evil'; the need to sort, quantify, analyse, check, annotate, tabulate, shelve, file, index, probe, survey, inspect, decimalise, distil, synopsize, abbreviate, collate, measure, reposition and number.
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