#ephemeral worlds

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Such a top year with Ephemeral Worlds unit! Dr Sana Murrani cutting the ribbon at our end of year exhibition!

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One week to design, curate and build Ephemeral Worlds End of year exhibition.

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Prague - Day One

A numerous landmarks was explored during the study trip. Focus on the main buildings such as: 

Charles Bridge - A historic symbol of Prague, connecting between Old and New Town. As peaceful and romantic it may seem, the Vtlava (Moldau) River has not always been as calm as it looks today. It’s fury, combined with the power of heavy rains have many times flooded and destroyed the bridges people built over it.

Franz Kafka Museum - A long-term exhibition dedicated to Franz Kafka about housing existential space and imaginary topography exhibitions. 

Nerudova Street - A picturesque street leading up to Prague Castle. In this steep street you can find many restaurants, souvenir shops, embassies, but what’s most remarkable about this street are the house signs and the people that lived in that houses.

Prague Castle and St Vitus Cathedral - A history of more  than 1100 years  speaks for itself. The story of the Prague Castle identifies itself with the story of Prague and Christianity (860s, Chyril and Methodius) in the Czech Republic. In 870s AD the Prince Borivoj, one of the first Czech rulers from the Royal Dynasty of Premyslids ordered the building of the Castle, originally out of timber and with a soil rampart fortification.

Petrin Observation Tower - Dominating Prague from the height of Petrin Hill, the Lookout (Observation) Tower is one of the things it would be a pity to miss if you are in Prague.

Mirror Labyrinth on Petrin Hill - The Mirror Labyrinth is like a miniature Castle and it is situated on the Petrin Hill, next to the Petrin Tower (miniature Eiffel Tower). It is a remaining of the Former Prague Exhibition Grounds from 1891 and the interesting thing about it is that the wooden construction imitates the Gothic part of the fortification in Vysehrad.

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3A Mini Refuge: [Re]Branding Consumerism

Theoretical Proposal:

Plymouth [Re]Branding- Social Experiment

Reconnecting society through brand awareness

(Agenda Book page 31)

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City Narrative

Through analysis of the texts and production of the dioramas, we gained a greater understanding of the homelessness experienced within the city and along the course of our investigations.

The dioramas are situated across the city within key areas of our investigation and at key sites of [non] place and forgotten space. We cerated the tube station map as a way of contextualising the fragmented nature of time and space within the city.

"Narrative structures have the status of spatial syntaxes. By means of whole panoply of codes, ordered ways of proceedings and constraints, they regulate changes in the space made by stories in the form of places put in linear or interlaced series; from here, one goes there; this place includes another (a dream or a memory); etc."

By Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life 1984

This narrative map runs the journey of our trail and investigation, it sites our eight spaces as well as our four narrative texts to their place in the city. The face of the city is constantly changing through time, we as its inhabitants follow this change and ultimately not escape its impact on our daily lives.

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Final Diorama Map

We sited our final dioramas across the city on a map of disjointed scales. Highlighting our exploration of a warped perception of time and space within the city. We used the change in spatial scale to represent key areas of the city that have lost their sense of place through time. As the city forgets about these spaces; too many of its inhabitants lose their concept of history and memory.

"If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as a relational, historical or concerned with identity will be a non-place."

By Marc Auge, Non Places 2008

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Down and Out in Paris and London

From exploring Down and Out in Paris and London, we immediately saw a connect between the atmosphere of the church in the text and the atmosphere of Drake Circus within our trail. The church drew in the homeless with the lure of tea just as Drake Circus does to the inhabitants of the city through the power of advertisement and the idea of self gain. Both spaces seem without time or place they can be seen as transient spaces, never truly inhabited. Both funnelling people in and out. Both are false senses of refuge and home.

"It is as though we human beings are dominated by a compulsion to return to the familiar, or where there is nothing familiar to be found."

By Neil Leach, Camouflage 2006

Both spaces use this falsehood to draw us back to the familiar.

This distorted sense of time and place reflects through the city of Plymouth as a whole and it's what we found drove many of our theories and spaces. With this, we began to site our dioramas in a distorted compression of time and space across the four texts and the city of Plymouth. Using the non space of the tube map to draw the cities together.

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Down and Out in Paris and London

"Outside the church quite a few hundred men were waiting, dirty types who had gathered from far and wide at the news of a free tea, like kites round a dead buffalo. Presently the doors opened and a clergyman and some girls shepherded us into a gallery at the top of the church. It was an evangelical church, gaunt and wilfully ugly, with texts about blood and fire blazoned on the walls, and a hymn-book containing twelve hundred and fifty-one hymns; reading some of the hymns, I concluded that the book would do as it stood for an anthology of bad verse. There was to be a service after the tea, and the regulation congregation were sitting in the well of the church below. It was a week-day, and there were only a few dozen of them, mostly stringy old women who reminded one of boiling-fowls. We ranged ourselves in the gallery pews and were giving our tea; it was a one-pound jam-jar of tea each, with six slices of bread and margarine. As soon as tea was over, a dozen tramps who had stationed themselves near the door bolted to avoid the service; the rest stayed, less from gratitude than lacking the cheek to go."

By George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London 1933