Thursday, August 11, 2011

"WE SHALL DRAW GRAND DESIGNS…"


Photos by Janez Pelko


NOWDAYS, Boris Groys argues, "the ultimate problem of design is not how I design the world outside myself but how I design myself or rather how I deal with the way in which the world designs me." Today's self-design is a mass culture praxis par excellence, says Groys. "Everybody is becoming an artwork, while being its author at the same time." 

A person is walking down the street wearing a mask as a 'curtain wall' that is reminiscent of architectural modernism's glass walls wrapping. The mask is made of glass, its surface clad in mirror. While such mirroring look allows one not to subject his or her face to the gaze of the other, one is nonetheless transformed into a »context-bewitched being.« 

"The mask out of glass protects us from the intrusive fragmentation of the contemporary subject." (Ida Hiršenfelder) The mask is based on Oskar Schlemmer's design.