STILLNESS OF A HAPPENING
We encounter many things happening, some hardly recognizable, around us, ignore most of them everyday. Each of them has its own characteristics and unique back-story.
What if we choose not to ignore? An object in a particular frame at a particular time can be experienced only once.
In “The Manhattan Transcripts”, Bernard Tschumi showed how events taking place can be appreciated and how there are several ways to interpret these events. Tschumi was, in a way, encouraging us to discover hidden messages or maps, to whatever we pursue and might possess but never realize, contained in our routines, from action in our surroundings. Mundane activities can define life. Tschumi made conceptual ideas of architecture, which shows architecture is more than just building, from what is normally seen.
Some of the works in “The Manhattan Transcripts” depict action with seemingly empty footage and some of them individuality with seemingly rhythmic material. Most focus on movement as it gives insight to the action. Every one of them narrates a story on which Tschumi may have expressed in the conceptual works. My work is mainly inspired by the pieces in the sections “The Park”, where static environments still show activities, and “The Block”, where movement tells the story, but usually, everything is present.
The footage I used is an image, captured at sunset, of a resort beach, with numerous fishing villages nearby. Sunset is regarded as calm. In the frame, neither the fishing villages nor resort hotels are visible, yet their opposing activities are evident and the sea, as always, has movement, however small. The dominating calm background and hints of movement maintain balance and the combination shows those people’s lives, the primary focus of my conceptual work.
Architecture is not just simply about space and form, but also about event, action, and what happens in space.
(Bernard Tschumi)
References
Tschumi, B. 1978–1982, The Manhattan Transcripts, 2nd edition, London and New York, Academy Editions/St Martin’s Press.
http://www.tschumi.com/projects/18/ 01/05/2016
