Cities and Desire:Īnother Calvino’s short story is about city of Fedora, in which city centre is the metal building with a crystal globe in every room, so everybody can have a look in the globe and can see different (desired) Fedora. Her film ‘Disappearance at Sea’ is visual meditation on seemingly polarised opposites – lighthouse and sea: man-made structure and nature, as well as position of the individual (viewer) in that setting. This work raises issues of alienation of the individual in urban environment as well as feelings of displacement of outsider within new, non-home environment.Īnother artist whose work is relevant to these issues is Tacita Dean. My short film ‘Sunset at Willesden Junction’ is also about longing and recollection of romantic places one cannot forget. It raises issue of nostalgia that is addressed in melancholic and romantic works of Mariele Neudecker.Ī Mariele Neudecker video installation carries melancholic nostalgias as well as alienating effects. This paragraph describes the power of memory and inevitably with it nostalgia for lost and vanished places and events. €œ … the city which can not be expunged from the mind is like an armature, a honey-comb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember…†Italo Clavino writes about a city called ZORA, a city that no one, having seen it, can ever forget: The repetitive movement of little house, the endless stream of passing traffic and lullaby background music adds to atmosphere of everlasting and tedious daily struggles. A video-shot of a moving billboard is edited in the way to appear that the little house from the billboard (as symbol of the individual) is trying to push back powerful horses – (logo of Lloyds Bank). My other work, a short film ‘Desperately Fighting Scary Black Horses’ the same issue of consumerism is addressed.
Invisible cities by italo calvino windows#
Large empty hole left in billboards represent new windows that perhaps could open a previously unknown view. The boards are left empty and open so one can have a look to see what is behind. My photographs of billboards with cutout commercial messages are about the same issue – the issue of consumerism within contemporary cities that results in alienation of the consumer as well as the producer who becomes also a consumer on the other ‘end’ of the circle. This is a vision of Rist’s world of wrappings of various disposable objects one buys daily – white or translucent plastic bags, shovels, toothbrushes and its shadows mixed with wild nature of powerful ocean’s waves. A shadow resembles fish passing in shallow water, or driftwood surfing the surface of the ocean, so it looks surreal and dramatic. To create this installation she used a combination of video shots of an open ocean and various plastic and paper see-through objects that hangs from an apple tree branch, swinging in front of video-projector so it projects its shadows over the ocean shot. Her installation at ‘The State of Play’ exhibition ‘Apple Tree Innocent on Diamond Hill (2003)’ deals with the issue of consumerism. Pipilotti Rist ‘s videos and installations often features billboards and consumer symbols. The signs are communicating to the viewer in well-premeditated language and form and in its communication, signs are influencing and (re) forming viewer’s opinions. This refers to the semiotics of urban landscape, a panoramic view of a city surveyed by the viewer and symbolic representation of materials and social practices – opposition between the market and place. Marco Polo is describing to Kublai Khan various fantastic cities he saw on his travels in order for the Emperor to comprehend the sheer size of his own empire (home). It is written as of a succession of dialogues – meditative conversations between Kublai Khan, the emperor and Marco Polo, the traveller and visitor to Khan’s Empire. Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’ is a collection of surreal short stories about cities visited by the traveller Marco Polo, places where people act, depict and consider things that make no sense or are impossible. I decided to build upon some of the themes from the exhibition and Calvino’s book in my essay, and to apply its ideas to the work of various contemporary artists in whose work I am interested, as well as to some of my own work and the issues I am trying to address. The exhibited art works reminded me of various details from Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Citiesâ€. Trying to find the right framework around which to build my essay for the module ‘Themes and Concepts 2’of my Fine art Degree, I visited the recent exhibition ‘ The State of Play’ at the Serpentine Gallery, London. Essay on theme of Italo Calvino’s book “Invisible Cities” applied to work of some contemporary artists as well as to work of Edita Pecotic
0 kommentar(er)
