A CITY OF UNFOLDING PRESENT
Individual Work, Illustration, RISD, 2017 FALL
This city has no solid moment.The present is constructed by the fragments of past. Objects from different time exist simultaneously in space and dissolve constantly.
The mediator is the changes over time. If the object is still, the space is clearly defined and almost solid. If the object changes, the space that contains it will start to decompose. All the the fragments along process will be recorded, and be re-constructed, which forms an ambiguous and momentary spatial quality. The city’s present is a perceptual montage.
The parameter is the interval of change. Long interval result more concrete space than the short one. Events happened and gone, with time passing by, the space is decomposed and reconstructed over and over again.
image here
NOTES:
This is an experiments I did for testing my thesis concept. Conventionally, we perceive an object as a pin located in space and in time (like a container.) Merleau-Ponty argues that Time and space are actually cut out from the passage of an event and are brought into its form by virtue of the existence of things. It's hard to shift our perspectives and visualize how some of these phenomenological thoughts are implied in daily life. So I did it in a reversed logic. How about assuming the object is a pin in space and time, but we remove it from the subject of our narration. Then, how do I re-present it? I have to describe it through events, which requires a specific space, a specific time, and an order of successions. By doing this, the city becomes fluid. Individually we experience it in dynamic ways, and this configures the space and time of “personal city”. Wherever all individual experience overlap, it forms "our city" collectively. A city with no solid moment carries the duration of past within its unfolding present. It saves us from the transience of time.