Archive for the ‘Exercise 18: PROFORMA Studio’ Category

Exercise 18: PROFORMA Studio

2 March 2010

Director: Sergio Prego

Venue: Proforma Studio

The inflatable pneumatic structure PROFORMA Studio arises form a desire to preserve an environment by isolating it within a membrane. It is designed at a disproportionate scale with regards to the architecture. Its massive volume aims to provide a broad space for expansion focused towards the establishment of a working community, blocking out pre-existing architectural signs. PROFORMA Studio suggests an experience in occupying space, whilst this exercise suggests an experience in transiting and occupying space on that scale. What is specific to this exercise is the architectural dimensions inherent to the environment as a whole.

The exercise consists in a simultaneous transition along two lines – within and five metres above the pneumatic structure. The action shall be conditioned by a number of variables. The pneumatic structure’s height shall be adjusted in order to set it at varying distances from the hall’s ceiling in such a way that it forces the people in transit to alter the posture of their physical actions. Basic furniture such as chairs, tables or other objects may also be inserted between the inflatable and the ceiling.

Documenting the movement shall be an integral part of the experience. Participants shall initiate the process fully aware of the ways in which the experience is to be recorded. There shall be two perspectives: on the one hand, the entire process shall be documented as an event for the collective transformation of an environment, taking the action in its more global dimension and recording each and every activity conducive to the achievement of the exercise. On the other hand, there will be a focus on the movement, which shall be documented both by static elements and by the people who are simultaneously in transit within and above the inflatable structure. The relationship between the bodies and the inflatable’s mass and membrane will be very different within and above the structure. The exercise therefore aspires, in the editing process following the experience, for the similarities and differences between the different lines to establish subjective identities and projections between the actors. I addition, awareness of this dimension during the action itself is expected to direct participants’ gazes and condition their experience.

Projections and relationships between perceptions of the various actions shall establish forms of equivlance capable of generating a representation imbued with alegorical potential. This representation may bring about parallels in the recording that shall in turn generate echoes between past and present events; between what is happening in the present and traces of the past.