Dot is new in the city. She feels like she is the only circle in town.
Everyday she walks the same streets. "This city is boring, I've seen everything here!" She says.
One day Dot sees another circle.
She finds the yellow circle so amazing she follows it all the way through town. Dot starts to hide so she doesn't scare her new friend. . . . . . . . . . . .
She runs up & down, in & around the buildings. "This is fun" She thinks to herself.
As Dot looked up and around she saw other circles & a new exciting city.
But when she looked back down, her new friend had gone. Dot had lost her new friend.
Dot had seen and felt so many new things today. "This city isn't boring!" She exclaimed.
HANNAH MORIARTY S3281202
stalker
client
stalkers desire Sophie Calle: A Survey The Camouflage of Desire. Deborah Irmas In this text Deborah Irmas summarises Sophie Calles unusual ‘art’ career and her courageous process of documentation, describing her as a journalist or an unintentional (rather than an intentional) artist. I would like to direct my attention to Calles work ‘Suite Venicienne’ where she follows a man she barely knows to Venice. She is not sexually attracted to the man and has no intention or interesting in starting or forming a relationship with the man but feels it is her obligation to give him her direct attention. “Nothing [was] to happen, not one event that might establish any contact or relationship between them. That is the price of seduction. The secret must never be broken…” 1 I have been influence by her act of following, and related it to my own theory of sexualized space in the city as a mode of a better and serendipitous understanding of our surroundings, experiencing the city though a strangers movements. This mode seems simple enough but in opposition to the contemporary style of tours, the guide became more of an interest than the sights of the city. “Calle finds that she is able to, while following another person, to stimulate the obsessive longing for a stranger that one usually associates with unrequited love. However, the exercise can be terminated at will, and with it the manufactured feeling. Are fabricated emotions, then, really any different to that we call genuine?” 2 In the case of ‘Stalking’ which is how I began to understand Calles method of thinking, this ‘will to terminate’ I found a harder to let go. Maybe I became too involved in the client and lost hold of the reality of the situation. This was an interesting outcome but it is problematic for the safety of the stalker. Baudrillard, J. “Please Follow Me” Postface in Suite Venicienne, By Sophie Calle, Paris: Editions de l’Etoile, 1983, p78 2 Irmas, D. The Camouflage of Desire”, Sophie Calle: A Survey Catalogue, Fred Hoffman Gallery, 1989, p7 1
critic writer
Site-Writing The Architecture of Art Criticism Jane Rendell Throughout this reading Rendell explores the boundaries between subject and object by introducing the various positions of the art-critic and their relationship to the work, as well as the architects role in creating the ‘space’ or ‘context’ for the art. In art practice Feminism and postcolonialism have influenced a more sophisticated understanding of the viewers experience how their “pecepetion and conception, varies according to cultural identity and geographic location, and has an intimate as well as public dimension.” 1 Rendell draws attention to the performative and interpretive relationship between the critic and the work, and this is determined through “situatedness”2. There is a shared connection between the situated position of the critic in the case of viewing art and viewing people as Hal Foster discusses “the different distances produced by the optical and the tactile, but warns of the dangers of both dis-identification and over-identification with the object of study.”3 We can look at the stalking in a similar way where the watcher becomes the ‘critic’ and the analysed as the ‘work’. There is however another role that can be taken which we are told is the interpreter, who must be neutral or disinterested in the objects, this ‘disinterest’ would seem a useful performative technique for determining the watcher to keep secure while in action. Criticism can also become a tool in self-assurance “a desire to install superiority over a needy object”4 Rendell introduces us to psychoanalysis; a Freudian psychological theory, a specific type of treatment where the “analysand” (analytic patient) verbalizes thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst induces the unconscious conflicts causing the patient’s symptoms and character problems, and interprets them for the patient to gain insight to problems. More importantly she claims that psychoanalytic space occurs at the point when the encounter occurs where the analyst is touched, moved or disturbed by the analysand. Psychoanalytic free association gives hope that if we truly disconnect our mind and subconscious then we may be able to form thorough critic – work relationships and discover our real emotional connection. 3 4 1 2
Rendell, J. Site Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism. (2010) P3 Rendell, J. Site Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism. (2010) P4 Rendell, J. Site Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism. (2010) P4 Rendell, J. Site Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism. (2010) P5
Space, the City and Social Theory Introduction/Embodied Spaces: Gender, Sexuality and the City Fran Tonkiss In the introduction Fran Tonkiss asks the question of how are key social categories – such as community, class, race, gender or sexuality – constituted and reproduced in urban contexts?” Through observation of ‘social actors’ within these categories there will be direct links to how these actors – act within the public arena. Their individual performance will be dependent on their social upbringing, location, wealth, race and sexuality. Through testings we should be able to have a better understanding of how and why individuals claim social space. ‘Public’ and ‘private’ is once again a major device in understanding these social relations and throughout my stalking and sexual observations I have been able to see the impact our surroundings especially architecture impact our sexual instincts within space. On this note Tonkiss mentions that space is organised by our own mental maps; choosing to show inattention or attention as a spatial tactic to interact or avoid social strangers and community. Our “right to the city”1 has also had an impact in the understanding of how we have evolved by subtle manipulation to accept our limits within public space. We unknowingly ‘act’ in a certain way within space due to signs and codes that we have been adapted. The urban context can also be a “representational space”2 which is space of imagination, embodiment and desire. “The spaces of social life are social products…it can be relatively easy to knock down a building, but it is much harder to demolish a space which is composed around memory, experience or imagination.”3 Sexiality in space or putting bodies within space; how is urban space organised? Tonkiss speaks of three levels – meaning use and shape of urban space. This raises the question – has the urban environment been organised around sexuality and gender or vice versa? Tonkiss reminds us of the truthful idea that women often feel fear at night alone in dark areas, explaining that it is a fear of ‘men’ rather than a fear of ‘space’. I am wondering whether this is truly the case in the city of Melbourne. Is it feminist to think that men fear at night alone too – women? We must remember the power of the female in the social environment. Tonkiss, F. Space, the City and Social Theory, 2005, p5 Tonkiss, F. Space, the City and Social Theory, 2005, p3 3 Tonkiss, F. Space, the City and Social Theory, 2005, p3 1 2
individual society
Architecture from the Outside Elizabeth Grosz Embodying Public Space: An Interview by Kim Armitage and Paul Dash This was a powerful interview with a scholar in philosophy, humanities and feminism (though possibly still abandoning the latter), on architectural theory. Elizabeth Grosz made it very clear that she is not an architect, she is trained in philosophy. This brought an interesting tension to the interview, unsure as to how this happened I felt my anxiety levels rise throughout – embodiment through written form? Thus we move into the embodied space response where we can link into the idea of virtuality where Grosz argues Paul Virilio – “The mail – the physical letter and electronic media – functions virtually…we were already in a certain mode of virtuality when we write letters or when we painted and read. The city has never been just anything but an ongoing site of virtuality.”1 Armitage and dash introduce the term “Cybertopian”2 which is a term coined from cyberculture novel Electric Dreams to describe someone who believes in liberation from real space. To which Grosz points out the attachment of the machine to the human, the machine (computer) is only an enhancement of the body and despite our current addiction to technology we must remember that “there can be no liberation from the body, or from space, or the real”3 There are many ways of interpreting depersonalization in space; there is the thrill of being immersed into a space where we become part of a collective, able to enjoy the predetermined boundaries. Alongside thrill comes fear of commercialised spaces such as shopping malls, Grosz ingeniously argues that “the spaces of the mall, ironically, are for many people precisely the spaces of the most intense pleasure.”4 Technology has introduced an endless (ever changing) amount of issues into society, but we are the individual, our experience of space is personal. Ignore technology. Simple (she says sitting at her laptop about to send through via the internet. Grosz, E. Architecture from the Outside. Ch. 1. “Embodying Space: An Interview” P16 Freidman, T. Electric Dreams. 3 Grosz, E. Architecture from the Outside. Ch. 1. “Embodying Space: An Interview” P18 4 Grosz, E. Architecture from the Outside. Ch. 1. “Embodying Space: An Interview” P21 1 2
interoception exteroception proprioception
Flesh.1 The Mutant Body of Architecture Georges Teyssot 1
: the outermost surface of the ‘‘ body’’ bordering all relations in ‘‘space’’.
The future is looking grim for our flesh, our vital organs, even our race; we have already reached an age where we have become utterly replaceable. Prosthetics can replace our organs and limbs and machines can replace our work, how is this affecting our body within space? While there is minimization in relational space, cyberspace is continuing to grow. It listens to what we have to say and seems to understand us more and more, thus becoming, quite literally an extension of our body. It may be very cynical to point out that it seems we are moving into a “disembodied style of life”2, but despite this notion it is impossible to ignore the fact that we are all encased in felsh – and on this surface are the sensorimotor organs, included among our “visible objects”. 3 The skin is “a border defining within and without, a protective frontier, the envelope of the flesh, the body’s armor-skin separates and isolates. An interface of pains and pleasures (“erogenous” zones)-skin is both armament and armor. Blushing, blanching, sweating-like the eyes and the mouth, skin is also a medium means of communication.”4 The layering continues we represent ourselves and define our social status in the final shell; our clothing can be organized to manipulate how others view us, this includes lack of clothing. Today inanimate objects are taking on human qualities, embracing this modern age seems to be our only option, it has become impossible to ignore technology. But don’t give up, cyborgs haven’t taken over yet, they cannot survive without us, this is “where word play arises between ‘having’ a body and ‘being’ a body.”5 We must remember that we have philanthropic qualities that cannot be mimicked; we are living, breathing sensual beings that relate to other bodies and embody through relations, affects and desires. Georges Teyssot, “The Mutant Body of Architecture”, P10 Drew Leder, The Absent Body (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), P39. 4 Jean Querzola, “Le silicium a fleur de peau,” Traverses, no. 14/15 (April 1979), pp 136-173. 5 Stephane Ferret, “Extraits de corps.” in La chair de Psyche, pp 436-440 2 3