Cell, secret lives part II

Cells Vol.1 & Vol.2 by Jean-Pierre Attal

Entre art et archéologie sociale, le photographe parisien Jean-Pierre Attal observe l'architecture des bureaux contemporains. Between art and social archeology, the Parisian photographer Jean-Pierre Attal observes contemporary office architecture. Derrière ces façades de verre, comme dans une ruche, la vie se dévoile, grouillante, innombrable, anonyme. Behind the facades of glass, like a beehive, life unfolds, swarming innumerable anonymous.

Sur cette série, Jean-Pierre Attal précise: In this series, Jean-Pierre Attal says:

« L'architecture des bureaux actuels ayant évolué dans le sens d'une plus grande transparence, je décide en 2007 d'explorer de nouveau ce terrain favorable à l'extension de mon travail d'archéologie sociale de la strate urbaine. Ces photographies grand format appréhendent la réalité d'individus étroitement liés à l'architecture contemporaine. "The architecture of the existing offices has evolved in the direction of greater transparency, I decided in 2007 to explore this new ground supported the extension of my work of social archeology of the urban strata. These large photographs format apprehend the reality of individuals closely linked to contemporary architecture. Elles fouillent le monde du travail tertiaire à travers les ouvertures vitrées des tours de bureaux contemporains. They searched the world of tertiary work across window openings contemporary office towers. C'est dans une très grande proximité qu'elles donnent à voir ces empilements d'étages saturés de salariés, révélant l'activité frénétique d'une ruche en pleine effervescence. Les « open spaces » deviennent alors totalement accessibles et dévoilent les détails d'un univers standardisé qui habituellement nous échappent. Dans le chaos architectural, c'est finalement la récurrence et l'obsédante répétition qui conduisent à l'évanouissement des êtres sous « X ». It is in very close proximity they are to see these piles of floors saturated with employees, revealing the frenetic activity of a hive of excitement. The "open spaces" become fully accessible and reveal the details a world standard, which usually escapes us. In the architectural chaos, it is ultimately the recurrence and the obsessive repetition that lead to the vanishing of beings in "X".


http://muuuz.com/2010/04/07/alveoles-vol-1-vol-2-par-jean-pierre-attal/en/

Collage City

I'm messing about a bit with Photoshop to try and create atmospheric collages of the architectural characters/signifiers in our project, and this is an early draft of the first attempt, focusing on the walled garden.

HBO voyeur project

There are 5 story locations with their respective addresses:
West 41st Street, "The Artist"
East 85th Street, "The Housewife"
Prince Street, "The Meditator"
West 72nd Street, "The Mortician"
Broome & Ludlow with 8 individual stories:

Apartment 1A, "The Tempted"
Apartment 1B, "The Departure"
Apartment 2A, "The Discovery"
Apartment 2B, "The Proposal"
Apartment 3A, "The Killer Within"
Apartment 3B, "The Grown-Up Table"
Apartment 4A, "The Delivery"
Apartment 4B, "The Temptress"

Via Richviewer

CAST

Narrator, Smoker, Flaneur, Narcissist, Chameleon, Dreamer, Jester, Trickster, Extrovert, Gatekeeper, Voyeur, Stranger.

IDEAS

Dubliners

The introduction to my copy of Dubliners (Penguin, 2000) contains the following extract from a young Joyce's letter to Nora Barnacle shortly after the death of his mother in 1904, when he was 22:

"My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity - home, the recognised virtues, classes of life and religious doctrines. How could I like the idea of home? My home was simply a middle-class affair ruined by spendthrift habits which I have inherited. My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my father's ill-treatment, by years of trouble, and by my cynical frankness of conduct. When I looked on her face as she lay in her coffin - a face grey and wasted with cancer - I understood that I was looking on the face of a victim and I cursed the system which had made her a victim."
(Letters, II, 48)

The extract is a scathing denouncement of Joyce's upbringing, rife with youthful disillusionment and the horror of awaking to find that his life has not in fact been as he had believed it to be. The inherent pathos of domesticity seems like interesting ground for exploration...


"There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse."
The Sisters, p.1

New character of the voyeur, perhaps? Gazing into lit interiors is one of the greatest pleasures of the urban experience...

"I waited until his monologue paused again. Then I stood up abruptly. Lest I should betray my agitation I delayed a few moments pretending to fix my shoe properly and then, saying that I was obliged to go, I bade him good day. I went up the slope calmly but my heart was beating quickly with fear that he would seize me by the ankles. When I reached the top of the slope I turned round and, without looking at him, called loudly across the field:
- Murphy!
My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me and hallooed in answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the field to me! He ran as if to bring me aid."
An Encounter, p.20

This scene comes after two young boys skipping school encounter an eccentric older man in a field in Ringsend. The situation is every bit as suspicious as it sounds; the boys are uncomfortable in his presence and, at the beginning of this extract, the narrator decides to break away from the conversation. This piece reminded of the trepidation and fear that can characterise encounters with strangers, a quintessential part of an urban existence, and something which we have overlooked thus far.

"That night the city wore the mask of a capital. The five young men strolled along Stephen's Green in a faint cloud of aromatic smoke. They talked loudly and gaily and their cloaks dangled from their shoulders. The people made way for them."
After the Race, p.39

Interesting for a couple of reasons. Really like the description of Dublin as wearing "the mask of a capital", and, although my footnotes suggest that this refers to the fact that the country was, at this time, governed from London rather than Dublin, I prefer to associate it with those brief moments where Limerick feels superficially like "a real city". The characters are also relevant for our purposes; perhaps this kind of extroversion (at night, in groups) is what we have been thinking of?




Image via http://www.flickr.com/photos/bg/4365402771/. Interestingly, it formed part of a physically disconnected, loosely defined virtual reading group's response to the stories. More info on the project here: http://motleyread.posterous.com/reading-joyces-dubliners-join-in-the-fun

"Jenny, I think I have an idea."

How's this for a first stab at programme...

I've been thinking about the ideas of third space that we discussed, and happened across the cinema as one example. The more I thought about it, the richer it seems as an architectural construct, particularly with regard to our idea of the cast of characters (not in the literal sense of the shared device of 'casts' between our approach and that of the typical film, but rather how the cinema could act as deeply authentic idea of a place where the lives of the characters can intersect, both with each other and, simultaneously, with lives of characters on screen) and also as the ultimate liminal space, a space of suspended narration, where notions of real and unreal collide, enmesh, slip by, and then, when the lights come on, the world as we know it is restored (see your earlier reference to 'Alice in Wonderland' perhaps?).

It also seems to embody many of the notions espoused in the brief. I have always found the forced intimacy and faux-domesticity of the cinema situation fascinating; it really seems to tread the ground between 'house' and 'common room' in a way that no other programmatic element I have come across thus far can do. In addition, it is a facility that the city of Limerick is lacking, and one for which the need is evident, at least to me. The typology of cinemas in Limerick is very much that of the vernacular 'pedimented shed', and so it seems as though there is something there to work with on that front too.


The following beautifully evocative quote about the pull of the cinema is by Elizabeth Bowen, from J. Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace, p.23, as quoted by Tom de Paor in the essay entitled Delay, contained in 'The Lives of Spaces'

"I go to the cinema for any number of different reasons - these I ought to sort out and range in order of their importance. At random, here are a few of them; I go to be distracted (or 'taken out of myself'); I go when I don't want to think; I go when I do want to think and need stimulus; I go to see pretty people; I go when I want to see life ginned up, charged with unlikely energy; I go to laugh; I go to be harrowed; I go when a day has been such a mess of detail that I am glad to see even the most arbitrary, the most preposterous pattern emerge; I go because I like bright lights, abrupt shadows, speed; I go to see America, France, Russia; I go because I like wisecracks and slick behaviour; I go because the screen is an oblong opening into the world of fantasy for me; I go because I like story, with its suspense; I go because I like sitting in a packed crowd in the dark, among hundreds riveted on the same thing; I go to have my most general feelings played on. These reasons, put down roughly, seem to fall under five headings; wish to escape, lassitude, sense of lack in my nature or my surroundings, loneliness (however passing) and natural frivolity."


I think that a lot of the experiences Bowen describes here dovetail very neatly with our initial discussions on the temperaments and motivations of our characters, and there is also a very nice sense of the mercurial nature of the individual, which the Invisible Cities discussion, and the expression of that in the cast (as both discrete entities and united whole simultaneously), were beginning to get at.

metastages and more...

Interesting description of part of the process we have been, in my case unwittingly, undergoing thus far:

"...characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no-one else has discovered or said something essential about"

And, interestingly, tying in to the Invisible Cities discussion we had, the next line is as follows:

"But isn't it true that an author can only write about himself?"

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera, p215


Also, I know you're uncomfortable with the 'All the world's a stage' concept that has been coming up both in class and in our discussions, and I am aware that we're sailing a little close to the wind with the cast idea, but I thought you might appreciate this nonetheless:

'A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it.'
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera, p247

All the world's a meta-stage, perhaps?


The image is an untitled Gregory Crewdson photograph referencing the character of Ophelia

Cast of Characters

Narrator
Stranger
Flaneur
Smoker
Extrovert

The urban 'cast of characters' has been drawn up as a device to enhance our understanding of those who populate our city. Recognising the inherent subjectivity of architectural design, and therefore the pitfalls in a brief that encourages us to begin with people, we are seeking to extend our reach beyond the self, and beyond our collaborative selves, to examine the topology of a multiplicity of perspectives. Using the literary and filmic device of a cast, which claims to be neither complete nor mutually exclusive, we hope to find a way to achieve a deeper understanding of the meaning and relevance of house, common room and archive.

The Narrator

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9B_HdjVDhs

0:52 - "Little did he know..."

smoker/flaneur/extrovert/storyteller

Thinking a bit more about the cast of characters idea, perhaps it would be sensible to read some Benjamin/Baudelaire on the flaneur? May also throw up some ideas as to the makeup of the rest of the cast... As an aside, Benjamin was apparently an ardent archivist, not only with regard to his own work and to collections, but also engaging with the concept of archive (see image above)