Improvisations on a Theme 1–5
Mixed Media
420 × 594 mm
2015
Brute
Publication
250 × 176 mm
2017
Part of Demapping Metropolises.
Series of compositions that was spontaneously conceived and produced. Inspired by grids, shapes and textures appearing in the urban landscape, the compositions are experimentations on urban planning. As plans, they could be observed either side- or top-view. Although they follow a certain set of rules, the compositions expand improvisationally on the set grid, not unlike a city would expand following or disregarding urban planning. Thus it remains ambiguous whether they are in the process of construction or in a state of deterioration and disintegration.
Documented details and further impromptu experiments were bound together as an index of textures and patterns.
Demapping Metropolises is a series of projects that re-explore the urban landscape. Photographic documentation, as approached by Situationism, provides the basis for an elemental deconstruction of the modern metropolis—a break down to basic forms, shapes, lines and grids, textures and patterns. These structural elements are employed in various visual experiments in an attempt to express situations and relations in the contemporary city. Sharing techniques and concepts from the fields of critical cartography and illustration, the artefacts produced—in form of books, experimental publications, prints, maps and abstract compositions—communicate thoughts and ideas on how the urban environment is perceived non-linearly and non-spatially but based on notions and speculations to eventually compose a critique on socio-political issues of the modern metropolises.
Process and Details
