Vol. 9, No. 1
November 2004
 

Built Spaces.
The Cultural Shaping of Architectural and Urban Spaces

 

___Diane Fellows
Oxford, Ohio
  "Remembrances and Passages":
An American Grid as Memory Personified
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The inter-disciplinary work, “Remembrances and Passages”, a performance narrative, deals with architectural place-making using painting, video, and a performance reading. In the video montage, paintings of characters in self-portrait and abstractions of urban alleys are in concert with live action video to inform the understanding of human activity in a given place, and the creation, through aesthetic attributes, of that place. Fundamentally, my work addresses how private aspects of migration and refuge become visible through the creation of public spaces and constructions. By private, I suggest gender, sexuality, and ethnicity.
“Remembrances and Passages” takes place in
Denver, Colorado, USA, in the city’s alleyways. Eight city blocks historically identified as the ‘Chinese community’, or ‘Hop Alley’, existed within the urban grid of Denver’s commercial district. The performance text, based on historical accounts of this early Chinese community (1870-1947), is a contemporary story of two people who know each other by name only and agree to meet on a July afternoon in lower downtown Denver. As each travels along an inner city alleyway, events unfold making it impossible for them to meet.
Accounts of immigration, refuge, and ethnicity are shared in the video by Chinese currently living in Denver. These accounts are the pulse that drives the total video montage and the performance narrative, and informs architectural place making through layers of narrative storytelling.
 

   

Poster presentation:

panel 1
panel 2
panel 3


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Vol. 9, No. 1
November 2004