User:Luisa Moura/notes/rwrm/on method/draft 01

RESEARCH ON IMAGES OF ESTRANGEMENT

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RESEARCH ON BODY AWARENESS: 3 INSTALLATIONS

WHAT

The works in display consist of four spatial installations conceived to be seen and experienced by an individual user within a quiet and semiprivate sphere. Each one of them is self contained, in the sense that they are independent modules, boxes that can be easily placed in different locations and in different relationship with each other, if possible close by. The volumes are metrically related and are built up with the same material in order to facilitate modes of spatial association among them and generate a group identity. Each one of them has its own individual setting and it is an end in itself, but experiencing all of them is essential to understand the meaning of the work. Each installation is an attempt to explore levels of sensorial experiencing, body awareness, and the diversity of approach is essential for the message underlying the nature of the installation as a research tool

Two of the installations have a direct relationship to a body awareness exercise, one based on physical oppression and other on an amplified sound reaction. The first is a 4,5 meters long corridor with a cut out of a human icon, the user is invited to go through this ‘Human Template’ in the most appropriate or possible way and feel the restrictions of its friendly shape. The second one is actually a set of three boxes with the same dimensions of the previous one: 4,5 meters long and with a width suitable for a human cross through (outer shell: 1,5 meters, inner shell: 0,9 meters) . It’s called ‘Present’ and is meant to stress out a spatial reaction on a user’s movement. The inner walls are covered in three different materials, each box with its own: fishing net (hanging loose from the support surface), thick carpet and hard foam. Along the walls and in contact with these materials several piezo microphones are installed and in the ceiling a row of speakers display live, significantly amplified, the sound recorded by the microphones. The user is confronted with an exaggerated sound effect of his presence running through the narrow corridor. The space left between the covered walls shouldn’t wider than 30 centimeters, forcing the user to actually rub his/her body on the different surfaces.

The other two installations have to do with self perception, not anymore in a physically confronting way, but exploring a matter of point of view regarding the user’s own image. One is called ‘Magritte Revisited’ and reproduces with live display of footage the strangeness of looking at one’s own back when looking into a mirror. In a small cabin the user seats in front of what appears to be a mirror, in which an unframed HD screen displays an image of the wall immediately in front. When the user seats down the camera gets activated and starts recording its back, which gets to be live displayed on the screen. The capture of the camera is precisely coincident with the limits of the screen displaying it. On the second installation the user looks into a tube in order to see footage; it’s the most private level of interaction between the public and the work in display. When the user looks in to it he sees a live display of himself looking into the tube. A hidden camera next to the installation keeps the overview of the act and plays it back. As with the other installations the experiment is purely about a few seconds of confrontation on a certain action and it is not meant for a longer time of interaction.

HOW Boomerang Richard Serra (1971) Delay: check, watch and write something about it. The prisoner’s dilemma +

Why am I interest in this? What is the relationship between architecture as visual tool of control and the media? All the themes seem to gravitate around vision and control. The photography of minorities give us the feeling of empowerment associated with the privilege of looking into their lives and judging them; the installations try to address the thin line between the perception of the self and perception of the other (once again, a matter of political consciousness and social empathy); (…)

V2. The arts and crafts, not as human powerful drive, but as a manufactured desire; induced by the dominant classes and governmental institutions in order to distract the citizens from their political role as critical collective. Arts and Crafts movement and its revivalist periods are deeply related with a desire for self empowerment and attention on individual growth and this doesn’t seem to come naturally out of the masses, but is fed by the media until it grows into a collective belief that everyone is engaging in a new era of humanist power. This faith in the human creativity and its picturesque deeds appears to be the most efficient way of creating detachment among people once it feeds individualism and diminishes significantly any political drive.

FUNDAMENTAL LINKS

ARTS AND CRAFTS = INDIVIDUALISM INDIVIDUALISM = LACK OF EMPATHY WITH A COLLECTIVE NO COLLECTIVE THINKING = NO POLITICAL DRIVE So, I need to explain the nature of arts and crafts as individualist drive and the nature of politics as collective consciousness. Feeding individualism brakes political consciousness and the feeling of self empowerment keeps people quiet, busy on its own selfish affairs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Dan Graham, Hannah Arendt, Matthew Barney, Marina Abramovic, Machiavelli, Le Corbusier, Susan Sontag,