A case study- installation referring to  situations  on the roads of the city, created by repair works..

My attention focused on constructions and objects appearing on the roadscape as  visual attractions, during  periods of road repair within the cityscape.

 

The first part of this personal case study was the process of documenting the public space. Documenting these structures  aimed at exploring their material-object visual language, their synthetic variety, the paradox way of use and their ability to aquire artistic values.

The field of research was set in the historical city centre of Thessaloniki, as I  move within it on a daily basis and the stimuli I receive walking around the city area were reflected upon my personal archive.

The documentation, presented in the form of digital photography, began to imprint the multiplicity of versions of this phenomenon from February of 2011 until October of 2012.

What came out is a photographic collection of of a variety of distinct composite structures, focusing on their materiality and their meta-data, as an expressing factor of their potential.

     

In the second part of the project, the idea of assembling the actual objects from the public space, was organized, with the intention to investigate their functional and ergonomic boundaries. The objects were cut-off from the urban-public context and relocated into a studio. There they  were processed with the intention to be reused in a personal collection.

The objects were: mapped,

                              maintained,

                              photographed,

                              numbered,

                              grouped,

                              listed,

                              described  and

                              tested in compositions.

 

Within this personal process, I noticed the transformation of the object's conceptual context (from objects found in the street- to objects of a collection), and therefore their potential use as a “collection items”.

In order to highlight transfer their new acquired properties to the public, via the exhibition show, I chose to combine elements of presentation types such as the white cube and the Wunderkammer.

The aim of this installation was to redefine the stereotype public image on the documented objects.

Within bipolar rendering motifs on "public-private space", "use-non use", I tried to explore the boundaries of the commonly accepted public usability and functionality.

Objects of urban infrastructure became the focal point of a public, conceptual and aesthetic dialogue because of their presentation.

 

 

Maria - Dimitra  Vetta

Final degree show for the School of Visual and Applied Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, A.U.TH.,

1st Painting studio, Professor Skilogiannis Georgios, Thessaloniki, November 2012