INVISIBILITY Reading The Territory From Its Hiddeness
Introduction of invisibility “this is a last piece of love poetryto cities, at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to live there." -《Invisible city》Italo Calvino The so-called invisibility is the reason that you want to see and fail to see. Speaking of it, the city is the most conducive to seeing. The bright lights make the city at night look like at daylight. The bright night sky makes the birds lost, and the stars are hidden. In order to see, people in the city came up with various means, and as a result, people saw many scenes, but they could not really see the city itself. The city is like a mysterious figure, people live in it, and its truth is always outside people's sight. The establishment of human existence is inseparable from the observation of external things, and the world wakes up with the sight of human beings. When people see a city that they don't understand, they feel anxious. To relieve this anxiety, the visual acuity of the eyes is not enough. People must see things in their own lives, for example, look at the grass that shakes in the wind, be surprised at the opening of a flower, and see the city as a well-designed machine. Because they see their existence from these harmonious things. But the city is not built on a land that is calm and peaceful. This huge, growing, rolling, colliding, and changing world has become a huge maze beyond people's expectations. How to see the city itself in the city? And how do you remember or tell a city? In fact, many details exist in the city, or the existence of these things are also hidden in various parts of the city. These are made up of every detail that is invisible in the city, and rely on them to construct or describe a city. In this photobook, I want to try visualize the labyrinth from three different layers: the notion of time, identity and language.
I.
The Notion of time When we see a certain street, a building, what we can't see is the time-built history behind it. One of its scratches, one brick, is the composition of events and spatial relations. We walked in the city and saw only the shallow images of the city, such as the streets full of cork oak, European-style buildings with a century-old style, a snack bar on the corner of the alley, a cathedral in the city center, but " It is not these things that make up the city, but the relationship between its space and historical events.” What did this street look like in the past, is it a residential area? The species that may be planted on the side of it is not a oak tree, but a green grass. Who is the original owner of this building? It may be an important person, but later he can only travel far away from his home. It is also possible that there is only a quiet old lady living here. She has been living here for her whole life since she was a child.
II. Identity
III. Language
The identity of the city is something that people think of when they recall the city. But the memories of the city are full of images of individual values, closely related to various universal experiences. Whether it is like water, mountains and other natural elements, or artificial elements such as churches and museums, people can remember this uniqueness of a certain city.One example from the book of invisible city is the city of Isaura with thousand wells, it was built over a deep lake, where “the inhabitants dig long vertical holes in the ground and succeed in drawing up water, as far as the city extends.” Water here is as a vitality of life, a close relatonship between the city and its people. So water is as the identity embodied in this city. In cavallino, there are various of amentities that can be observed as identiy like the beach, camping site, agriculture…
What language does the city communicate with us, or what language do we use to understand the city? , what is the narrative of a city? When we want others to understand and start to imagine a city, we will begin to describe the details of the city. For example, in August, the city will be crowded with people lying in chairs and basking in the sun and reading. These are the cities trying to visualize themselves in a certain language. In the book, the protagonist lists a number of specific city signs that can describe statues, images, etc. The signs of these cities form a language, and "no language is absolutely not deceptive", that is to say the so-called language does not really indicate and represent the city. People always try to describe the world in which they live by language, but this always contains deceptiveness, and the world itself does not have absolute objectivity. After the language is established, it should not limit our thinking and imagination to the city while helping us understand the city.
I. The Notion of time "The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning roads, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indetations, scrolls." -《Invisible city》Italo Calvino
II. Identity "Irene is the visible city where you lean out from the edge of the plateau at an hour when the lights come on, and in the limpid air, the pink of the settlement can be discerned out in the distance below: where the windows are more concentrated, where it thins out in dimly lit alleys, where it collects shadows of gardens, where it raises towers with signal fires; and if the evening is misty, a hazy glow swells like a milky sponge at the foot of the gulleys." -《Invisible city》Italo Calvino
III. Language "So, for each city, after the fundamental information given in precise words, he followed up with a mute commentary, holding up his hands, palms out, or backs, or sideways, in straight or oblique movements, spasmodic or slow" -《Invisible city》Italo Calvino
INVISIBILITY-READING THE TERRITORY THROUGH THE HIDDENESS
European Postgraduate Master in Urbanism(EMU)-Università Iuav di Venezia Hongxia Pu -2019012