this project is a public installation that incorporates a narrative film that looks to evaluate the construction of beauty and glamour by hollywood and form a juxtaposition between this film beauty and the beauty of urban architecture and sprawl. by projecting this film onto an urban/three-dimensional space, the aim is to show how the ideals of beauty and glamour are distorted in today’s society. this type of projection helps to play into the heterotopia of public space (freeway overpasses, subways, skyscrapers and other institutions of urban sprawl) and aims to juxtapose the ideas of beauty and glamour with those of urban architecture in a performative way. in this way, the use of a public, three-dimensional space creates an atmosphere of performance that can be used to being a discursive discussion around beauty and its distorted perception.
garbo typified the idea of glamour, but when she first came to hollywood critics made remarks about her ordinary appearance. after fifteen years, however, she came to be regarded as the instigator of glamour. this installation hopes to explore that construction and how it influenced the definition of beauty (now glamour had to be added), hollywood (other movie stars began to emulate her “lighting” or “style”) and the consumer culture on a whole. it seems that while we live in a very visual culture, many have misconceptions about the nature of film, beauty, glamour, public space and performance. with this project i hope to expose the audience to the pervading sense of beauty/glamour that has been distorted over time. by reconstructing a narrative and placing it in the context of public space, the viewer is exposed to several different ideas of what beauty is and shown how glamour is not something that is organic but instead constructed as well as being dark and sensuous.
the film portion will be created using editing techniques that draw from publicity stills and footage from her movies. the focus will be on providing a history of how she was portrayed in photographs and films to show the transformation that happened that ended with her being called “the most beautiful woman that ever lived”. this will start with luffarpetter from 1922, before she came to hollywood, and end with two-faced woman from 1941.
this film will then be projected onto a three-dimensional surface of urban architecture. using a three-dimensional element allows for particular features to be accentuated or receded from the images appearing. this also sets up the contrast between what is being portrayed in the film and what is actually there, architecturally speaking. in this way, the public and performative aspects come together in the installation. i hope to elicit the idea of how beauty can be distorted through juxtaposition with urban sprawl. therefore, the private becomes public and the installation creates a space where beauty exists outside in the public space where it can be evaluated and contained within the architecture of the city.
twitter
flickr
facebook
Equipment
urbanfestival