WATER: A LOVE STORY 2013 AA Summer School Tutors: Jon Lopez and Sylvie Taher
Where did the romance go? Somewhere in the development of our modern lives, we lost the romance of water. Water has became part of the infrastructure, it is like the tube system. It is there, we are heavily dependent on it, but we would never outwardly accept that dependence, let alone celebrate it in anyway. We’ve taken it for granted. But wasn’t there a time when the romance still lived? When water was more then just water. When it was about a moment of calm, or purity, or travel, or even the simple promise of reflection? This unit is an attempt to rekindle the romance with water. Building from the myth of Narcissus, unit four will re-image the story of water in London. Narcissus is the portrait of a man, who, confronted with a reflective pool, fell in love with himself, and forgot his environment. The three principle elements of the myth, the material pool, the self, and the setting, are all central to the story. They each in turn become central to our story. We will take the three ingredients; the reflective surface, the protagonist, Narcissit himself, the scene and explore, deconstruct, and redefine, each one, until we finish in the end with a new scene. A different Narcissitic story, where London is reflected to inspire a new love story.