Above is an isometric projection of the piece we are working on. It is a model of only those interior spaces a ‘subject’ would pass through in their escape from a large unspecified institution. Sections will refer to different institutions – school, hospital, corporation, prison, library etc. No outside architecture will be modelled – only the interiors experienced by the ‘subject’.
day 3 of the residency went by like a flash. transitioned from moving in to being here. drank with the residents ’till late.
day 4 has been the first proper day, no orientations or structured activities. People on the residency seem a good bunch – there are 19 of us. Varied work and practices.
Today we sorted out that we would indeed go with 1:24 scale on the piece – the added patheticness of the slightly smaller-than-grand maquette is attractive to us. also means the end product will weigh less, take up less space, which is a bonus. We’ve also decided to focus on 4 rooms of the interior: the holding cell, the lobby, the classrooms and the central hall, in that order. We’ll see how far we get on them, but if we could get at least these done it would be enough to photograph the piece and give a sense of the finished product.
We did yoga today and got off-campus for dinner. Change of scene was nice (and after only 4 days!)
i am sure you know mike kelly’s piece ‘educational complex’ which seems to share similar intions with your current project. perhaps.
We are aware of the ‘educational complex’ and the works around it. This is great reference for our current piece, though i think there are significant differences in the general approach. (and i’m speaking here specifically of the table-top models mike kelly produced). Perhaps the main one is that the mike kelly work can be seen as institutional critique, whereas our piece is not critical in that way. The ‘institution’ is an image of the world, and it is the absent hypothetical subject that the piece centres around. I’ll have to think about it some more, though… either way, i really like ‘educational complex’ and it’ll be interesting to see how the finished work relates to it.