artist
statement
Necessities of Life
Necessities of Life is a new body of work in progress exploring the poetics of big box mall signage in the context of the cultural landscape.
This is the fourth series investigating suburban sprawl outside Toronto, an environment based on the unsustainable, and already collapsing,
car culture. The language of the big box mall signage is a deeply significant description of our current needs and desires.
This is an institution in control of its access and activity. Marshall McLuhan talks about buildings as self-contained communication systems;
the very architecture is a dynamic medium that conveys the message of a high demand for social order. He says that "architecture shapes
and rearranges the patterns of human association and community." Marshall Mcluhan; Understanding Media: The extensions of Man 1964.
How does something as imposing and monolithic as a big box mall fall so beneath our notice as to become almost invisible? Institutions operate
to control what we are able to see. To view a building as a medium enables us to see its social function.
References
Song LI: The Imperial Palace, Harbinger Institute of Technology
Images
This is the fourth series investigating suburban sprawl outside Toronto, an environment based on the unsustainable, and already collapsing,
car culture. The language of the big box mall signage is a deeply significant description of our current needs and desires.
This is an institution in control of its access and activity. Marshall McLuhan talks about buildings as self-contained communication systems;
the very architecture is a dynamic medium that conveys the message of a high demand for social order. He says that "architecture shapes
and rearranges the patterns of human association and community." Marshall Mcluhan; Understanding Media: The extensions of Man 1964.
How does something as imposing and monolithic as a big box mall fall so beneath our notice as to become almost invisible? Institutions operate
to control what we are able to see. To view a building as a medium enables us to see its social function.
References
Song LI: The Imperial Palace, Harbinger Institute of Technology
Images