Strangely enough, the latest book I bought is titled “Circus”, written by Rupert Croft Cooke and Peter Cotes. It charts the history and the origins of the circus: “…The importation of the more exotic life forms from distant places must have excited the stay-at-home crowds who had never travelled beyond the walls of their native cities, so that circuses have fulfilled the dual purpose of entertaining the public and in rural areas of England educating them in natural history.” (Circus, a world history, Rupert Croft-Cooke and Peter Cotes,p.7)
All these wondrous exhibitions of exotic animal and species and organized sequences of performances seemed to introduce into human thought options and alternatives that a ‘stay- at -home’ person would never have thought of.
Douglas Gordon Proposal for a Posthumous Portrait, 2004
Now it seems clear to me that even if in the beginning I was not aware of how I could create an overlapping of distant realities, what source material I would use and what steps I would make in order to mix it with my own subjectivity; this overlapping was very much the focus of my interest .
As I became deeper involved in this research, I started to perceive the province of collision not as something stable and fixed, but as an area where transformation takes place; where different parts could start exchanging elements, forming new entities.
In short, I was lead to the common basis that forms all the myths: mutations; the duration when one‘state’ gives its place to ‘another’, the duration where two natures are present; one ceasing to come forth and one dying. This viewpoint of the notion of constant change and hybridity helped me to focus not on the disorientating multiple facets of reality but on its explanation as a natural phenomenon encompassing the world.
All my research was about trying to make a picture of life as a continuous interaction with others, as a continuous becoming. Through mutation and rebirth, the 'escape' into the inventive nature of a child's experimentation is introduced.
What I present in the final exhibition is exactly this: an imaginative play of forms, a sequence of ‘states’ of a cyclical nature, where one’ state’ gives birth to the other. There is a constant marriage of different realities, a negation of a single identity or of a dominant authority; there is not death, there is only fluidity. There is no longer any figurative sense; the emphasis shifts from considering time as ‘duration’ to what one really feels and lives -as Bergson introduces in his ‘introduction to Metaphysics’- ‘attached to the intuition of change’.The one and only reality we could seek for is our subjectivity; a subjectivity which through its flowing through time, differentiates itself.
According my practice, I realized the relationships I was looking for between parts in order to compose the sequence of images, could continue forever. The reason behind the specific selection of images is still a subject for contamplation and critique, yet the incorporation of the accidental appeals to me.
The research I have been involved into, helped me accept my incompleteness in my own practice and to separate myself from my work. It has also helped me conceive it just as a representation causing my personal transformation the same time. It will always be impossible to identify myself into my work. It is more a play of inventing other selves for me, combining differently elements, past and present, interacting with others and collaborating.
Personally I cannot distinguish personal from professional development.
All my research helped me evolve personally, helped me reject all the fear of not recognizing myself into my work; as such, liberated me. Now, I feel more able to experiment practically with ideas.
This year allowed me to free myself from all the constraints of the architectural discipline while my future plan is to combine all my previous skills and explore more the physical interface and sense of tactile. Iam inspired from all the optical devices i encountered in my research; devices which mutate the forms around us and alter our perception as well as from interventions in existing buildings using mirrors:
Olafur Eliasson, colour vision Kaleidoscope, 2003
Olafur Eliasson Your Compound View, 1998
Alfons Schilling, Gazelle, 1993
Alfons Schilling vision machines
Stereoscopes, 1900
Old optical device using lens and creating a new portrait as an assembage of parts of other portraits.
Jeu d'Ovide ou des Metamorphoses, France 1870
SintaWerner, model for a site specific installation at QUAD, Derby and the Grundy Gallery, Blackpool, 2009
A potential direction would be set designing; meaning set designing for real space and real people; collaborating with others with whom I could share the same interests of a world full of misperceptions.
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