User:Trashpuppy/Bloody Body of Building

TEXT AS ARCHITECTURE

The previous project I worked on, COBBLED AND CURSED - started from the notion that a work of literature is a piece of architecture that in principle can be entered from any point. Severing narrative from structure and structure from narrative. Semantically, providing dwelling to dweller for open ended drifting, with window and door opening inside and outside: there's no outside-text. (Not to be interpreted as: there is no outside-culture)

While perceiving literature as a building, a construct, I also perceive architecture as an apt metaphor for the body. Equally constructed, a compartment with dominant forms and desired traits. Ending up with a triad of text, building and body. It's not a coincidence the text is a body of language, the eyes windows to the soul. The analogies endless are endless, as is the symbolic balast: a door is never a door. It always opens and closes on something.

Upon moving to Rotterdam I was overwhelmed by the speed at which the urban formula was stamped out of the ground. One day the street was all broken up. The pavement torn open to show a multitude of tubes all tangled in dirt. The next day there was no trace. Everything was neatly patched up again. It made me think of surgery, the soft tissue and bones poking out, exposed. Past traces much more visible than on the city as a palimpsest. Aside from the fact that I was somewhat astounded by the speed and invisibility (in some of the cases, in the contrary to the high buildings erected) of these altercations, it also felt extremely violent to me but it was home in me.

"For that is the terrible thing, that I did recognise it.
I recognise everything here, and that's why it goes right through me: it is at home in me" (p. 48)

To me, there is a link between construction sites and the construction and de-construction of the human body. The element of violence, the giving brith to something and in the process killing off possibilities. Both birth and construction are glorified and to a certain extent beautiful things come into existence, possibly, but it comes with price and violence.


BUILDINGS AS BODIES

Collection of piercing images, compiled over the last couple of months. Initially wanted to interject these into a film, not sure if I will.

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FOUND FOOTAGE FILM
I have been working on a short video compiled from found footage. It combines footage from medical archives, Dutch news archives and home videos. The method fits with my overall artistic approach that often relies on the reworking and remixing of found materials. I wanted to experiment with moving image and sound. I have recorded a lot of sounds of construction sites around Rotterdam. For now, the video juxtaposes footage of the body, hands primarily, with that of construction sites. Hands point out incidental, indecent. A-shaking a linguistic game wrapped in symbolism. The internal structure is pulled along a sexual arch, the perfect attempt at tension.

How to make a construction site as intimate as the human body?

Or

How to make the human body as alienated as a construction site?

The body as a constant witness. You experience the world through a being in the world in a body. A city you experience through being in your body in the embodiment of a city, architecture