Lecture 5 - Social spaces- Sight/sound

- Single point perspective - visually representing space. No perspective outside the wester culture.

Berger:
"there is no need for god to situate himself in relation to others. He is himself the situation".

Understanding is limited and inhibited by our vision. Third world doesn't get a say and is encouraged to act as the first world wants.

Vision is active, Potentially reciprocal, multifacted and therefore the site of a diologue of power.

Jemima stehli - 'strip'
Connection to the Gaze. Awkward feeling wen the art critic is sat looking at the woman naked - objectifying, Making you aware that there is someone looking back.
-illustions that we understand the world

Henri Lefebure (1905 - 1991)
-French Intellectual, Marxist sociologist
- Revolution via everyday life
- Influenced the situationists in 1950s and 60s.
- Influenced student leaders of 1968 Paris uprising.
- A theorist of radical movements.
- A creation and function of space: SPATIALISATION

"illusion of transparency"
- The illustion that:
Understanding is possible
The objective viewpoint exists and somehow enables understanding
No 'total' picture
'View from above is flawed'

Social space is continually shifting and is built on history, memory and imagination.

Vito Acconci (1969) - Following piece.
-Following one person around the city not letting him know hes being followed.
-illustion that you control a social space - you know what to expect on a journey but all the time there are things happening that change the social space around you. Illustion of control.

Transgression as a result of space: response to its limits
-Rebelion
-Spaces are controlled so people use those spaces to rebel eg. London queens square rather than a small town.

Maze prison - Belfast
Dirty protest 1977-8
(De-humanising the individual) Steve McQueen made a hunger video.

Sir Robbert Pere statue in Hyde PArk. (tory and inventer of the police).
-Vandalised, attempt to challange the space.

-Vision informs thought
-Western traditions incorporate the narrowness of single point perspective
-Lefebvre's 'Illusion of transparency'.
-Important 'social space' = Multiplicity of meanings and experiences.
-Controlled spaces provoke reations.
-Reciprocal vision allows inversion or transgression of power.