Models of models : representations of souvenirs, souvenirs of representation

For as long as I can recall, I have been fascinated by the history and development of cities as well as the actual construction and physicality of architecture. Since commencing visual art studies, a further investigation of these fields has led to an increasing interest in the manner in which buildings and cities have been represented: for example, medieval plans and maps where conventions of perspective differed from those considered \correct\" today. In particular though it has been the architectural model and miniature that have come to hold a specific interest; an interest which has had a significant and lasting influence on my ceramic practice. These forms served as a starting point for much of my previous work and they continue to do so in this project. The research undertaken during my candidature is of a twofold nature. Firstly it deals with notions concerning the actual experience of the city and more specifically the complex and contradictory role that representations play in the perception of that experience. The city is itself a representation - of its \"historically and geographically specific institutions ... practices of government ... [and its] forms and media of communication\" . 1 The city is also the object of representation - as in plans and maps. We use both in everyday practice in order to rationalise and to project experience. In doing so we come to treat these abstractions as natural entities rather than the cultural constructions that they are. This project reflects on the ideological positions we take in respect to the city and its representations and importantly the paradoxical interrelationship of those positions in lived experience. Our perception is conditioned by culture to recognise an image or representation which is then understood and interpreted through our personal experience. The second aim of the research involves an investigation of the ceramic medium itself. Aside from the pleasure I take in working with clay it is an entirely appropriate medium for this project. Clay has a strong historical connection to both building and architecture and as well an established use as a medium of architectural design. For several years now I have been slip-casting various elements which are assembled into architectural forms before being fired. The task of this research is to test how far it is practical and possible to extend the techniques that have developed in my work over this time. These two areas of research have necessarily evolved in tandem one impacting on the other so that initial ideas changed and transformed. While it was always the intention for the work to be exclusively ceramic and placed directly on the floor and walls the final arrangement did not resolve itself until approximately half-way through the course. This allowed time to be spent on the actual construction of the pieces a process that remains a particularly satisfying part of my practice. It also left time for reassessing and questioning which on occasions proved to be quite disconcerting. The aim of this paper is to give an account of the theoretical and practical considerations of the research as they evolved throughout this exercise. While the project is based on and exploits notions of utopian architecture and the ideal city it is not meant to be seen as either utopian or nostalgic. Rather it intentionally operates between these poles so that the work's identity and meaning become unstable with the hope that the viewer comes to question their relationship to it. As I hope to illustrate in this paper ambiguity is used in a number of guises throughout the work in order to address the ideological nature of abstract representations of the city and the conventional positions we take in relation to them. Central to this project is the consideration of the paradox we find in everyday experience where ideological and therefore partial representations of both the self and the world come to mutually define and delimit each other - a situation which is reflected in an exaggerated manner in the particular experience of the miniature world. The models used in my work have been manipulated distorted and displaced in such a way as to serve as a metaphor rather than a representation of this paradox. The aim of the project then is to question our perception of and position within the increasingly mediated contemporary world. In my research I have been particularly interested in how issues of the imaginary and of space have reasserted themselves in postmodern analysis. Paul Patton in Postmodern Cities and Spaces states that images of the city play a crucial role in accounts of the postmodern condition. While acknowledging that these accounts remain surprisingly consistent with the city-experience of modernity he goes on to suggest that what they in fact present us with is imaginary cities. These [cities] are not simply the products of memory or desire .... but rather complex objects which include both realities and their description: cities confused with the words that describe them.2 Benjamin Genocchio in a chapter of the same book looks at the spatial transformations in our everyday lives and states that it is now evident that there has been a marked opening up in post-industrial societies to forms of spatial analysis. He divides the position of postmodern discourse into two categories saying: On the one hand theorists of the Jean Baudrillard genus continue to chant their millenarian credo of doom and gloom convinced that the bastard child of Cartesian space threatens to eclipse all semblance of the 'real' in a series of simulated orgies in Disney-style dystopias. Variations on this theme(park) can also be found within the work of Paul Virilio an ambivalent David Harvey and a nostalgic Fredric Jameson. On the other hand theorists such as Foucault Bourdieu de Certeau Deleuze and Guattari have insisted upon hidden but unmistakably clear possibilities for both active and constructive intervention. Yet despite subtle or obvious differences of opinions what all these theorists have in common is a collective desire to promote new forms of conceiving social space in an attempt to account for an eclectic occupation and engagement with an increasingly segregated oppressively functionalist and electronically monitored everyday reality. 3 For a number of years I have been attempting to engage with the ideas of these theorists as well as the critiques of them. Common to all is the loss of faith in our ability to represent or even experience the \"real\". The analyses that have been of specific interest are those which are concerned with dualities such as real/hyperreal official/unofficial public/private near/far inside/outside - but these analyses present interpretations of the city which do not deny either term of the dualities nor do they claim a finality of meaning. A discussion of this particular aspect of these analyses forms a substantial component of this paper. It is out of many ideas and concepts then that this project emerges and operates and it is here that the model plays a significant role. These forms exist like the city as both real objects and simulations and as such they have a particular effect on the mind and body. In Susan Stewart's discussion of miniatures (of which the model is a related subset) she suggests that because of their intimate scale miniatures represents closure interiority the overly cultural; whereas the gigantic represents infinity exteriority the public and the overly natural. The balanced harmonious world of the miniature is one of arrested time its stillness emphasises the activity that is outside its borders. This effect is reciprocal for once we attend to the miniature the outside world stops and is lost to us. In this miniatures display a contradiction comparable to that of imagining the self in the world as place object and agent at once. It is this contradiction I have sought to exploit in my work. Stewart states that: The miniature world remains perfect and uncontaminated by the grotesque so long as its absolute boundaries are maintained. Consider for example the Victorian taste for art (usually transformed relics of nature) under glass or Joseph Cornell's glass bells. The glass eliminates the possibility of contagion indeed of lived experience at the same time it maximises the possibilities of transcendent vision.4 The miniatures (models) I have constructed are in fact contaminated by the manipulations distortions and displacement of them and by references to other forms of symbolic representations and technology. By taking apart and reconstructing elements of conventional representation and by mixing the real with the imaginary the factual with the fictive I attempt to highlight the biases and limitations of partial representations and by extension question our perception of reality. In chapters two and three I will explore in more detail the issues outlined here. However as this project is very much a continuation of previous ideas I believe it is helpful to begin with a description of my early work the techniques that were used and how these have influenced the current project. The final chapter of this paper charts the course of my latest research culminating with its installation in the gallery."