Oscar Pipson
Transitional Spaces: The Reconciliation of Polarities
Victoria University of Wellington
Transitional Spaces: The Reconciliation of Polarities
Transitional Spaces: The Reconciliation of Polarities
The intention of this work is to visually, viscerally and intellectually re-introduce the audience to those moments and places of contrast and change that we have come to oversee. I have attempted to illuminate familiar spaces and places, and to write in such a way that the viewer can engage emotionally and intellectually with the everyday, the omnipresent. By re-calling attention to common place physical contrasts and polarities often diminished by dramatic digital experiences I aim to revitalise the shift from one moment to the next, from one place to the other or just a beginning to an end.
2. The Brief: Summarize the commission you were given (or gave yourself). What was the context for this piece of writing, and what was the challenge posed to you? Where and when was it published? What is the approximate circulation of this publication? Who is the audience?This was a 300 level assignment done as part of the Bachelor of Design Innovation at Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand. The challenge was to create a 300 word photographic essay undertaking the guise of a Flaneur, to discover and respond to "an everyday." I explored the in-between, those spaces and places that join polarities. This work was exhibited in the 2013 School of Architecture and Design End of Year Exhibition and is currently under review for publication in peer reviewed journals. The audience is hopefully diverse and the work is intended to touch all those who use it.
3. The Intent: What point of view did you bring to the piece? What did you hope would happen as a result of your piece?The work discusses the need to re-introduce the connections between humankind and the physical spaces we inhabit, invade or just pass through. Believing that the 21st century reliance on the digital realm has numbed the physical experience once enjoyed in a more analogue existence I attempted to rediscover the drama and the heightened experience such spaces and places offer. Sadly we rarely pause long enough to inhale these. My hope is that the reader reconciles the images and the words of this photographic essay and begins to connect their own polarities in order to experience the journey between two points.
4. The Process: Describe the rigor that informed your piece of writing. (Research process, sources, reporting, fact checking etc., as applicable.)Inspired by the words and concerns of Walter Benjamin and Aldo van Eyck I approached this project with similar concerns for authentic experiences. I investigated through physical exploration the intimate spaces and networks around the suburban and inner city environs seeking forgotten and over looked spaces of the in-between. Constantly used by travellers, these spaces have become viewed as impotent voids between the here and now and the destination. My exploration culminated in my returning to these spaces at night. The intention was to highlight, through the dramatic contrasts available in black and white photography, the spatial qualities of these networks and to illuminate both the intimate and the public aspects of these spaces through visual experience. Drawing on Benjamin and van Eyck I then endeavoured to emulate the dramatic, yet common place qualities captured in my images through my writing.
5. The Value: How does your piece of writing earn its keep in the world?I hope the work will become a valued part of the growing discourse that calls for a more tactile, human and fundamental response to the world we live in. I hope the methodology will be adopted by others and applied to other counterpoints; not to unite polemic differences but to encourage the experience of the spaces and opportunities that run in-between them. I have endeavoured to celebrate the difference, by seeking out and experiencing what links, tenuous or otherwise, exist in the in-between. These transitional spaces house, I believe, one of the most vital paradigms of human existence, that of change. I hope this work will encourage inquiry, if not understanding for the importance of transition, difference and change and incites further investigations of the in-between.
This nicely explored the idea of the in-between. That said, given the short length of the assignment, we would have preferred that the writer devoted the word count to exploring one space in particular, examining its dynamic. It would have been more informative and less generic.