Wednesday, June 6, 2007

In_Side



" I've often thought that there should be beauty contests for the *insides* of bodies. "

These are the words of the character Dr.Elliot Mantle (Mantle vs. Dis-Mantle?) performed by Jeremy Irons in the David Cronenberg's movie "Dead Ringers". (Bari Wood & Jack Geasland book: The twins)


"The meaning of architecture is not in the floor, walls or ceiling, but in the world contained inside." Okakura Tenshin "The book of Tea"

Belonging somewhere has something to do with being "inside" in contrast with being "outside". Architecture evolves when it succeeds to include a meaning, a story, an idea, a system through the production of space...Architecture succeeds in constructing the "inside".
Gordon Matta-Clark is an artist born in N.Y. and studied in Cornell University. It was in Paris that he became aware of the French deconstructionist philosophers and Guy Debord and the Situationists. These cultural and political radicals developed the concept of détournement, or "the reuse of pre-existing artistic elements in a new ensemble." By what means is this guy making architecture? He objectifies the perception of the architect. An architect uses to "cut", "dis-mantle", "de-stroy" space in order to understand it. The greek word ana-lysis (ανα-λύω) stands for "the act of dismantling a unified whole in order to derive the structural information out of it". The anatomy of an architectural object leads to a "diagram of the insides". The building cuts of his constitute "architectural carcasses"...Mr. Mantle wants to be a new Frankenstein. Gordon M. Clark sees buildings as doll-houses...According to a Post-structuralistic approach: "Nothing is new; It is always a recombination of the old"