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 - p1      
IMPROVISED VILLAGES - p2  
VERNACULAR & STYLE - BERDUN
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE - FRANK'S CAFE - p1  
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE - FRANK'S CAFE - p2 - DRAWINGS 
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE - SOUTHWARK LIDO p1  ... pending 
"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 as 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 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. 

This example is '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 / to N)	LIVING-ROOM (1): EVENING (pic 1987 / to N)
LIVING-ROOM (2) (pic 1-12-1991)
GUESTS' LIVING-ROOM: "SEAGULLS" HOTEL, ST IVES  (pic 7-6-1999)

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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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