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Showing posts from June, 2010

BCCA Commission

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“What is missing from our dwellings today are the potential transactions between body, imagination, and environment”; … “To at least some extent every place can be remembered, partly because it is unique, but partly because it has affected our bodies and generated enough associations to hold it in our personal worlds.” Juhani Pallasmaa in The eyes of the skin quoting Kent C Bloomer & Charles W Moore in Body, Memory, and Architecture Considering this, how do we affectively and bodily experience the city when it is going through regeneration? In the present work, I will more specifically look at a site bought by Tesco in West Bromwich city centre, where no construction has happened yet but where most of the buildings have been emptied. It is as difficult to apprehend the surface of this site, as it is to apprehend the amounts of money involved in the largest British retailer. Only a physical confrontation with the space and some imaginary illustrations can help drawing the sket

COMMON GROUND event

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Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 11:00am - Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 4:00pm Location : Hanley Park, Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom Common Ground is a weekend long arts event in Hanley Park, Stoke-on-Trent, organised by AirSpace Gallery Studio Artists. The project invites the public to discover art works hidden and placed in the city park. The art works work with the historical and physical reality of the site, and set out possible future visions for a public park in need of activation. Common Ground has been commissioned in response to a recent public consultation project, Quality Streets, where the public expressed a desire to see activities and events taking place within the park. Common Ground will see artists intervening in public spaces; loudly, quietly, secretly or overtly, in a manner which questions the use of public parkland in the 21st century. The works will last the weekend, be sensitive to the place they are situated, and offer opportunities for delight and magic

“What do you love ?” - Common Ground Commission Proposal

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Proposal for Common Ground Hanley Park is, on a multicultural point of view, one of the richest places in Stoke-on-Trent. Certainly much more than a dozen of different languages can be heard there. The Shelton area has a highly diverse community: Asian resident community, International students, European and East European migrants, asylum seekers from various countries and now families who have become residents in UK. Opposite the park is also the Cauldon College where a lot of foreigners go to improve their English when they first arrive in Stoke-on-Trent. This is where the idea and the first trials of one of my works started, in 2002, when I first arrived in UK, coming from France. This piece is an interactive and progressive installation called “What do you love ?”. It consists in a circular portable mobile : from the outside, on hanging pieces of papers, people can read what answers have been given to the questions* and from the inside, they can individually write their own

Ema (Japan) - ex-voto (catholicism)

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" Ema (絵馬?) are small wooden plaques on which Shinto worshippers write their prayers or wishes. The ema are then left hanging up at the shrine, where the kami (spirits or gods) receive them. They bear various pictures, often of animals or other Shinto imagery, and many have the word gan'i (願意), meaning "wish", written along the side. In ancient times people would donate horses to the shrines for good favor, over time this was trasferred to a wooden plaque with a picture of a horse, and later still to the various wooden plaques sold today for the same purpose. Ema are sold for various wishes. Common reasons for buying a plaque are for success in work or on exams, marital bliss, to have children, and health. Some shrines specialize in certain types of these plaques, and the larger shrines may offer more than one. Sales of ema help support the shrine financially. At some shrines, such as Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, one can find ema in many languages, as tourists leave

computers, video and interactive art

Scott Sona Snibbe "Boundary functions " 1998