A Self-Portrait revels more than just physical appearance, it reveals how the artist hopes to be viewed by the world and how it wishes to see itself. It renders the impossible and is conceived as a ruin.
"Every eye has its own camera obscura . The camera Obscura in the technical sense of the term, seems to be contaminated by more ideological, more unconscious connotations, carried simultaneously by the notion of camera/chamber and that of 'obscura'. In ideology, ideas are put under lock and key in a room, cut off from the real material base alone can confer upon them light and truth. The dark chamber 'is a place were light can only enter through a hole an inch in diameter to which one aplies a glass, which letting the rays from external objects pass onto the opposite wall, or onto a curtain held there, allows what is outside to be seen inside."
Here is a little text that can starts to explain what I understand as self-portrait and what I understand as self-portrait of the city. The inner mutability of the self-portrait can be the subject that drives the TS, I am still not sure how or what does this mean but can be in relation to the "paper/stone" thing?....
THE INNER MUTABILITY OF THE SELF-PORTRAIT (TS)
The project speculates on the city as a self-portrait of all, in were rather than making an intimate image of an author this time we will question the inner personality of the city through its authors not just as an image but as an habitable space.
We are the inhabitans of our self-portraits and we are the context of this project, our lifes are the motif and the idea of city is the subject that is imagined by us and painted by a collection of authors. The city is our big home and canavas.
The image we see from the distance is transformed as soon as we glance or enter into the self-portrait. When we look at a self-portrait we experience a shock of recognition because we picture ourselves within it.
The technical part of this project studies the inner mutability of the self-portrait as we experience the relationships between spaces, such as the way we consult a mirror to question our image, rearrages our appearance this time the way we enter that image rearrages our initial perception of it through its space. In where the more you go into it, the more you discover yourself within it.
The City as a self-portrait, reveals more than just a physical appearance, it reveals how it hopes to be viewed by the world and how it wishes to see itself.
Below some thoughts I've been having from some redings I've been doing, it is not an actual text but just some quick ideas...I am using quotes as part of this "text" as I think are really good...
I am still not sture if I should situate the self-portrait in Philadelphia, I ordered some books about Philadelphia so, probablly it helps, Jhon Noel thought could be helpful just in terms to "make it happen"...
"Charles Dickens once said that he lived in perpetual dread of any sudden new discovery about shakespeare: the revelation of a letter, and image, a biographical fact, anything that might disturb his life's fine mystery."
"The ideal Shakespeare for Dickens is the Shakespeare we have, a genius and an absolute blank. Inmortal invisible, unimaginably wise: something like God Almighty"
The City, in this sense, is like Shakespeare, it doesn't have a face and the way we look at it and undertsand the urban space varies depending from were we experience The City and on how we experience its spaces.
The self-portrait of the City is made by all and not by the architect, sometimes _like Haussmann's renovation of Paris_ the architect wants to visualize the city as its own creation. Cutting through the old Paris of dense and irregular medieval alleyways into a more rationally designed city with wide avenues and open spaces which extended outwards far beyond the old city limits, (similar to Exodus by Rem Koolhaas or even The City of the Captive Globe, Plan Voisin by Le Corbusier and many more)
We all visualize the city in some way and precisely because of its diversity sometimes the architect wants to print its image on it. But "self-portraits catch your eye-come across them in a gallery and you experience a strange shock of recognition. For in picturing oneselves as an artist does on a self-portrait, artist reveal sometimes far more than physical looks: the truth about how they hope to be viewed by the world, and how they wish to see themselves."
The city becomes the stage set for of our self-portraits it is our studio, our canavas. "The way we consult the mirror to question our appearance, rearrange our look"
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