PRACTICE: Jack in a Box

There is a really interesting border between comfort and confinement. The smaller spaces are, the more we tend to feel uncomfortable and constrained. At the same time, some people are reassured by smaller spaces, by a sanctuary, a pocket of space big enough for themselves alone. Just by comparing cenophobia and claustrophobia for example; one is the fear of barren, open spaces, and the other is a fear of crowded, tight spaces. The fact that we are able to pivot towards either extreme demonstrates just how much space can affect us. Can a smaller space become a refuge or a prison?

Above the Below (2003) by David Blaine

1 Without (2010) by Wannes Goetschalckx

1 Kind (2007) by Wannes Goetschalckx

Wannes Goetschalckx is a performance artist who works a lot with restricted spaces. He looks at the emotional and physical in relation to body and space. He aims to reveal the hidden and apparent constraints in human life, the coexistence of comfort and pain, exposure and enclosure, cage and shelter.

"1 Without" is a video installation featuring Goetschlackx doing different activities in various sized wooden boxes, exploring the notion of captivity. It is reminiscent of what children do when they find empty boxes and containers to hide or play inside. From a young age, we learn to explore with our imagination. As we get older we tend to associate smaller spaces more and more with confinement and not play. We see spaces only on the surface, and we no longer seem to possess that curiosity for creating spaces of our own.

'Watch Where You Look' (2012) by Vivienne Du

The Box Task Day 16, Big Brother 6 (2005) courtesy of Channel 4

A task from Big Brother 6 required all the housemates to stay in their assigned cardboard boxes for as long as possible. Due to the nature of Big Brother, the activity was posed as a fun and entertaining treatment of the housemates' endurance. At first the housemates seemed to enjoy their new challenge but clearly as the time went on, the confinement of staying in a box for hours on end clearly became too unbearable for most. Three managed to stay in their boxes for just over 26 hours, you wonder whether they were simply not as affected by space or their determination drove them to stay.

Freak Like Me, courtesy of BBC3

REVIEW: [1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces] @ V&A, London

For an exhibition, nineteen architects were invited to submit a concept design for buildings informed by ideas of retreat and refuge, these were all designed in mind to be small in scale.

"the power that architecture has to silence all external noise, to focus attention on ones very own existence, away from everyday life and in the present moment, and to initiate a private dialogue with the space around us."

Ark (2010) by Rintala Eggertsson

Ark (2010) Rintala Eggertsson

In-Between Architecture (2010) by Studio Mumbai

Woodshed (2010) by Rural Studio

"Pallasmaa has expressed his concern that architecture has lost its connection with the body, that is has lost its potential for tactility and sensuous curiosity," and "Steven Holl indicated that in a world cluttered with a chaos of visual information we have developed a numbness in relation to the space around us, becoming increasingly passive in the way we read, interpret and consume our architecture."

"...the idea is to leave domestic surroundings and your everyday thoughts behind and enter a space that puts you into a state of wonder. Its a retreat, but unlike introverted contemplation, these spaces force you to interact with your surroundings. When entering, reality gradually transforms; things are not necessarily as they appear. The idea is to create a dreamlike atmosphere, where the borders between reality and illusion are blurred."

"we hope the visitor will experience a balanced joy -using body and mind to travel to unknown spaces."

Everything these architects have been discussing has a direct parallel in my work. I want people to be able to engage with spaces with a new sense of wonder and curiosity, to let their body and minds interact and immerse fully in the space around them and to forget the rest of reality.

PRACTICE: The Childhood Hideaways

At some point, we have all draped blankets across our bedroom, or the living room to create our own dens and spaces. It seems to be a common childhood activity from our memories, building our own escapes. Tents, and dens and small spaces that we use to transport us to a different place. Our imagination was able to take us to a parallel space than the one we created. I love that idea that we instinctively create spaces for ourselves, trying to mould and change the world to fit us, rather than trying to make ourselves fit into the world. This type of innocent play and exploration slowly leaves us as we mature. It's very reminiscent of stories like "The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe", how our need for imagination powers our world. I feel like it's something very rooted in my interests. Remembering the love I had for creating spaces of my own out of anything I could find, bed sheets, curtains, duvets, pillows, just to create my own hideaway, my own escape, my own space and world.

The Hiding Place (1998) by Bjore Bjarre

In a way I suppose that is still what I am hoping to capture in my work, that same childlike wonder and curiosity for building spaces and playing within them. I think that it is nice to be reminded of a safe haven we liked to keep as children, and even now we are still moulding the world to try and fit round us as best we can.

REFERENCE: If I Can't See You, Can You Still See Me?

I am fascinated by film and books that explore into the worlds of those that may inhabit alternate realities to our own. People who have been isolated from society, blinded, mute, on a voiceless island in the midst of our world. It's a world that cannot be entered or understood by anyone other than someone who has been there. In that way, we could never imagine or possibly experience what and how they perceive the world. How it differs from our own. They are trapped in their own world, one that no one else can relate to. It's a lonely place.

Dogtooth (2009) directed by Giorgos Lanthimos

Dogtooth (2009) directed by Giorgos Lanthimos

Dogtooth (2009) directed by Giorgos Lanthimos

Dogtooth is a film that explores the concept of isolation to its extreme. How people may behave and perceive their world completely differently when they are cut off from the rest of society. The film's insights are startling and haunting, a dystopian fear of a potential existence that seems terrifyingly otherworldly.

Blindness (2008) directed by Fernando Meirelles

"The only thing more terrifying than blindness is being the only one who can see."

Dystopian drama has often been a subject of exploration, a window into a darker reality we hope to avoid. Our fear is in fact due to its very likeliness to become a possibility in our lives. The best kind of dystopias are the ones that don't seem too far fetched or removed, the ones that everyone may and can fear. The fact we can comprehend vaguely how it would be to live in such a space, the psychological impact is far greater. If the world around us changes, so do we.

The Diving Bell and Butterfly (2007) directed by Julian Schnabel

REFERENCE: This Wicked Ballet

Men in Cities Series (1979) by Robert Longo

Cocoon (2006) by Liu Yuan Shou

Lost UK Promo (2006) directed by David La Chapelle

REFERENCE: Leap into the Void

Untitled (2010) by Lissy Elle

Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) directed by Samuel Bayer

Self Portrait "Suspended V" (2004) by Sam Taylor Wood

Leap into the Void (1960) by Yves Klein

29 levels of freedom (2003) by Li Wei

All these images seem to contain a haunting display of an inbetween space, an unbalanced activity, ambiguous whether the image sways more towards pleasure or pain. The idea of being completely weightless and free. I love artists that play with the movement of the body in mysterious ways. Levitation is one of those strange super powers that people often fantasise about having. On a similar level to flight, being able to simply float above the ground and away seems to be the ultimate contradiction to reality, to any grounding. To magic.

REFERENCE: A Distorted Perception

Requiem for a Dream (2000) directed by Darren Aronofsky

Garden State (2004) directed by Zach Braff

Black Swan (2011) directed by Darren Aronofsky

Keira Knightley featured in Chanel Advert

Coined by philosopher and theorist Michel Foucault, heterotopia refers to spaces of otherness. That are neither here or there, both physical and mental, much like the moment you see yourself in the mirror. What you see in a mirror does not exist, however the object of a mirror does exist in solid reality and offers us a perception of truth. It's a parallel space that only seems to exist inbetween, an uneasy balance of mind and matter.

REFERENCE: We're Masters of Disguise

"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping your and maybe you can sense our lifestyles are probably comparable...I simply am not there." -American Psycho (2000)

American Psycho (2000) directed by Mary Harron

Vanilla Sky (2001) directed by Cameron Crowe

REFERENCE: Follow the Leader

The Gameshow [The Experiments] (2011) featuring Derren Brown

It's no secret that I love Derren Brown. He's my favourite illusionist and has created some of the greatest social experiments.

Derren Brown's series [The Experiments] episode 'The Gameshow' went as far to show the public what happens when we are susceptible to the influences of others, to the anoymity of being in a group...Of our hidden instincts to follow in a pack and attack. His many investigations in this series explore the enormities of the human mind and mentality, exposes the many shades of grey in life, and reveals just a little of what the possibilities of being human might actually mean.

REFERENCE: The Faceless Maddening Crowd

A Single Man (2009) directed by Tom Ford

Closer (2004) directed by Mike Nichols

Lost in Translation (2003) directed by Sofia Coppola



REFERENCE: Lost in Space

Garden State (2004) directed by Zach Braff

What interests me the most is always the human and the psychological behind the façade of surface. I like the idea that someone can become so immersed, so lost in their environment, they barely, if at all exist. You can't distinguish yourself from the world or from anything else anymore. I look at our struggle with alienation and isolation in society, our tendency to become faceless and hidden.

"...in such a press of humanity -of strangers- individuals become as memorable as lampposts. Certain people retreat gladly into a world of anoymity, others enter that world and despair." -P91, Too Close for Comfort by Paul M. Insel & Henry Clay Lindgren

Helena Almeida

REFERENCE: Seeing Blind

A lot of artists have used fog as a sensory stimulus. There's something ethereal and captivating about being engulfed by cloud like air. I also love the dynamic this cloak creates between a group of strangers. Suddenly everyone is stumbling through the semi-opaqueness, laughing and sharing the experience as a group.

Your Atmospheric Colour Atlas (2009) by Olafur Eliasson

Blind Light (2007) by Anthony Gormley

REVIEW: [Abandon Normal Devices] ZEE @ Fact Gallery, Liverpool

ZEE by Kurt Hentschägler
Fact Gallery, Abandon Normal Devices Festival, Liverpool
29 September - 27 November 2011

Kurt Hentschägler's immersive installation 'ZEE' was described by one viewer as "a world as viewed by a dying robot clone from the inside of a Turner painting..."

I was certainly not disappointed. ZEE was a spectacular multisensory experience, that really did made me question how the things I was seeing were happening in my brain. To date, it's one of the most wholly consuming artworks I have had the pleasure of seeing, and I went in twice.

On arrival, participants had to sign an agreement, as the flashing lights and other conditions inside the installation may cause panic, seizures and other slightly unnerving symptoms. We heard stories from the invigilators of people fainting, or having to make an early escape. So after signing my life away on a slip of paper, they took us to the entrance and briefed us on what not to do. On the first occasion, I was in a group of about five, the thought of there being other people there was quite reassuring at first. Once inside, it dawned on me that it would make no difference.