A staging of: The tourist
As a suggestion for a new facade for the San Lorenzo basilica I have been working with creating stages for scenarios - functioning as public spaces and observatories.
Taking inspiration from the canovaccio in the commedia dell’arte, which was a masked type of scenario based theatre in the sixteenth century Italy, I became interested in staging the people in the streets of Florence onto the facade. Creating a stage dependent on human interaction to fulfill it. Like the canovaccio, creating an improvisation tool, a rough script dictating only the acts and scenes of a play - allowing other elements, such as plot and dialogue to be generate by the people themselves.
Spaces for scenarios are carved out of a whole body of marble: the entire volume of marble (799 m³) that Michelangelo intended for the original facade. By employing Michelangelo’s method of working (carving out of mass) to create the spaces, allowed for a more unpredictable and complex construction. Focusing more on the flow and experiences of spaces through the facade, rather than the consisting of strictly functional separated rooms.
The new facade of San Lorenzo is about staging the tourist, and in doing so creating a tension between the observer and the being observed. Its about movement, spaces and exposure. In the facade the tourist becomes both the producer and consumer of a product (a souvenir), relieving the church (and the culture and heritage) of producing itself for tourist consumption.
Within the facade there are eight cameras in eight different rooms, which are surveilling the human movement through the spaces. This motion is being projected onto the facade by separate projectors connected to each camera. Cameras are placed in every inward-facing room, and the projections is of the same size and placement of these rooms - imagining a direct extrusion. The human energy within becomes the ornamentation of the facade.
As people are interacting with the facade scenarios are being played out, and furniture and such work as props (moveable and manageable) within the stages. Allowing or denying ‘certain types of behavior’ to take place. These props will be possible to alter, switch and remove - and over time change the functions of the rooms in an arbitrary matter. Recording the unpredictability of the dynamic forces.
Relating again to the city and the streets the situations will be screened at eight locations around Florence city-centre. Creating a play, a distortion, between what is private and what is public. It facilitates a space for interacting, where the tourist play the role of the unknowing participant.