DAVID CARR-SMITH - IMPROVISATION / DESIGN / ART / KITSCH / CHANCE

"HOME"     ... in process

DEFINING MY LOCATION / MY NEEDS / MYSELF VIA MASS-MARKET PRODUCTS & TASTE

INDEX  
IMPROVISED-ARCH IN A'DAM SQUATS & COLLECTIVES 
IMPROVISATION - PUBLIC & LEGAL - ALLOTMENTS  
IMPROVISED VILLAGES - WANDSWORTH / KEW BRIDGE      
VERNACULAR & STYLE - BERDUN
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE - FRANK'S CAFE / SOUTHWARK LIDO 
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS

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THE MASS-MARKET HOME  ... in process
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THE LIVING-ROOM  ... in process

The Living-Room is a focus of attempts to mediate (use, understand, placate) existential conditions 
- to Use - functionally relate to (engineering) 
- to Understand - to 'model' (design) 
- to Placate - to sublimate (kitsch)  

The traditional living-room is a very intimate and very absolute place, an experiential front-line between 'Me' and 'It'. An interface that actively filters and mediates interpretations of the 'external unknown', resolving stress. 

The examples below are 'neurotic' rather than assimilative, ensuring 'security'/'comfort' by filtering perceptions via a surface of highly focussed signifiers of reassuring aspects of the 'outside', reassuringly stereotyped (stereos = mass agreement). 

The living-room's space (structure/content) is manifold. Many directions to 'outside' branch from this junction, qualitativly different types of space meet here (together these constitute 'experience'). It is an entrepot of different dimensions/destinations that may be physical, or metaphysical, or mental.

LIVING-ROOM (1) (pic 1985)  The living room of a city couple in their country 'retirement' cottage.  In a state of 'readiness for use'.	LIVING-ROOM (1): EVENING (pic 1987)  Two years later the room has hardly changed. There has been no change or expansion of use beyond an augmentation of 'comfort' (and indeed the 'signs' of comfort: 1 a larger and more expensive fire emits not only physical infa-red (like the previous machine) but placibo comfort via a model atavistic fire; 2 a new seating 'suite' - seeming more soft and plump than the old, more bed-like with its hard legs hidden by a ruffle//flounce like a 'fitted bed-cover'). The function of providing a physical comfort which reduces//expunges awareness of body during passive consumption of mass-mediated entertainment and rituals of endorsement///reinforcement///augmentation of sociality (mediated by displays of greetings and conversation)  , the occasional addition of a mnemonic signifier - these are the only changes against the background stage-set of quasi-permanent signifiers.
LIVING-ROOM (2) (pic 1-12-1991)  This  ... in process
GUESTS' LIVING-ROOM: "SEAGULLS" HOTEL, ST IVES  (pic 7-6-1999)  ... in process

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HEARTH & WINDOWS (physical):

The hearth, central for body-need - however this vulgar need is sublimated into the mental/memory space of 'ancestral-hearth': rustic stone (three cast-cement parts!), electrically flaming logs, iron firedogs.

The windows. These openings admit to the physical outside - the most external of three 'layers': first the body, second the 'mental­capsule' of the room, third this 'physical-infinity'. As this external 'chaos' approaches the room it becomes 'a view' - it landscapes and then gardens itself; at the surface of entry mnemonic filter-converters: diamond-panes and curtain-frames, pass light but process the residual physical-actuality into fantasy-memories.

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CLOCK (metaphysical):

At the center of the clock there is a non-dimensional start of time; the hands accelerate outwards from this point of motion's entry, the issue of all occurances. A terrifying signaller of utter un-existence beyond the surface of sight and of our identity's span of time! No wonder it is necessary to sublimate and/or disguise such an opening!

This example displays 'Roman' numerals on a brushed­-stainless face in a crafted-mahogony box. These meager reminders of property and schooling; 'modest-offerings-up' of 'responsibility'; 'solid good-quality workmanship' and 'knowledgable good-taste' attempt to cajole, tame, flatter, dignify, educate and own(!) this terrible spatial out/in leak, while actually degrading perception of the phenomenon and diverting assimilation into euphemism. (For celebration of the marvellous issue of time see pre-19C clocks).

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PICTURE (mental): 

If one cannot face the vertigo of present physical space one may mentally exit (out of ones hearth-warmed body) through this mental opening in the center of the wall, into the sentiment of a safely selected past, rendered with a reassuringly obvious 'authority' of skill. An 'Older England' - 'Land of the Free' (brushmarks) - "It used to be lovely to see them ploughing with horses" (never mind the ploughman - heavy, muddy, boring, long days of low paid labour). To the stereotype-tuned mindseye this picture is a mnemonic cloud-mill.

Note that the painting is 'mental' because this painter did not try to substantiate to himself a sensationally present place, but with habitual (and thus contentless) skill rendered a mind image. Indeed both the technique and subject are memory accumulated 'commonform' stereotypes distilled through many media. The result is not an experiential gradient - it is retrospective and its subject cannot be resolved in (present) attention.

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