Lecture 7; Space, Place and the Body

27/01/12

 'Semi-Detatched', 2004, Micheal Landy

This work by Micheal Landy was exhibited in the Durveen Gallery at Tate Modern in 2004. Influenced by his father who had an accident and had to stay at home to work. He was trapped in his home and instead of home being a relaxing, comfortable place it became prison like. Meanings and connotations of domestic life changed.

Link to Tate Modern Article

'Ghost', 1990, Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread is interested in the body, mind, memory and how it works.Ghost is a negative plaster cast of the space of an entire parlor in a modest Victorian townhouse. Creating a different viewing of the home, a familiar domestic place becomes unfamiliar and alters the feeling of the space. 

Article about Ghost 

'Splitting', 1974, Gordan Matta-Clark

Gordan Matta-Clark intervenes with architectural structure, fragmented. An hour after the work was completed the building was demolished.

The Homely VS The Unhomely. The relationship between place, space and the body. How is this view alterred or changed? Traditional understanding of the built environment/architecture is intrinsically linked to design, form and structure. 

Modernist architect Le Corbusier defined architecture as 'the precise and monumental interplay of from within light'

Michel Foucault, relational and social space. 

Gaston Bauchelard, relationship between space and time, 'The Poetics of Space'

The Walking City was an idea proposed by British architect Ron Herron in 1964. In an article in avant-garde architecture journal Archigram. Ron Herron proposed building massive mobile robotic structures, with their own intelligence, that could freely roam the world, moving to wherever their resources or manufacturing abilities were needed. Various walking cities could interconnect with each other to form larger 'walking metropolises' when needed, and then disperse when their concentrated power was no longer necessary. Individual buildings or structures could also be mobile, moving wherever their owner wanted or needs dictated.

'Le Modulor', 1942-1948, Le Corbusier. This was used as a system to set out a number of Le Corbusier's buildings.

'Unite d'habitation' 1947-1952. A residential housing design by Le Corbusier and Nadir Afonso.

Mapping intersections between body, and space in Art practice

• Minimalism, American Movement in the 1960s where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts.
• Gender and Space.
• Post Modernism.

Phenomenology

Tells us that we experience the world through our body, we are an extension of it. It is only by having a body that we experience the world. It is about perception, we perceive the world with our body through movement and vision.

'Phenomenology of Perception' Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Theorist. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work is commonly associated with the philosophical movement called existentialism and its intention to begin with an analysis of the concrete experiences, perceptions, and difficulties, of human existence.

Article link

Shepard Fairey uses phenomenology in his work to 'create a sense of wonder about one's environment' 

Obey Sticker Campaign as an example of Phenomenology.

Gender and Space

'Space, Place and Gender', 1994, Doreen Massey. Key writings about social space, gender and feminism. Talks about women being confined to the domestic space. 

Lucy R Lippard is a writer and activist, she writes about de-materialisation, conceptual art and feminist art.

'Womanhouse', open to the public in 1972 in L.A by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro.

http://womanhouse.refugia.net/