ADS6: Body of Making
About
This year, ADS6 presented the camera to architectural work as a tool of enquiry. We recorded and evaluated what we see not only for the purposes of documentation, but as a form of space–making. Whether through ‘hands on’ material investigations in the workshop, or using film to explore how impressions are recorded, inevitably, the body has become an integral tool to evaluate our findings.
We accept the camera as another body in the room, defining its territory, with its own needs and desires. We learn to collaborate with this apparatus standing between us and the space we want to capture. The camera is capable of looking forward and backward at the same time. Forwards, as in it ‘shoots the picture’, backwards, as in it records the vision of the photographer. Looking forwards, it sees the subject, and backwards, wishes to capture. Simultaneously showing ‘the things’ and ‘the desire’ for them. Architecture can become a performance where film, set-building and curation become tools for you as an architect to claim your position. A way of defying your own ‘body’ of making. In German, the word ‘Einstellung’ means the perspective through which someone approaches something, psychologically or ethically – the way of attuning yourself and then ‘taking it in’. But ‘Einstellung’ is also a term from photography and film signifying both the ‘take’, as well as how the camera is adjusted in terms of the aperture and exposure by which the camera person ‘takes’ the picture.