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Annexure A
semi-transparent
Architecture can be seen as ‘containers of knowledge’ and we need ‘to understand the role they play in shaping, rather than sustaining, memory.’ (Shotton 2013: 5). Having said that, ‘our built world may choose not to engage communication or memory as its primary vocation . . . it records and transmits history nonetheless.’ (Treib 2013: XI). As cities are inherited by new generations, we are left with the decision of whether to preserve the memories of the previous generations, or to start the process of converting the memories into history through different mechanisms. This process will subliminally alter the identity of the nation with which it is associated. These efforts have ‘extended beyond the monument to the site, and beyond sites to increasingly larger areas of both cities and rural landscapes. This tendency may likewise be a reflection of the uncertainty of a future identity and of the nature of the collective.’ (Shotton 2013: 3). As we are consciously transforming memories into history, we have to be conscious of the effects that the built environment (as a ‘container of knowledge’) has, and how these containers may be altered and transmuted by its inhabitants. Sculptor Juliana Cerquere Leite explores how seemingly invisible actions affect the environment around her. She develops the interior of a sheath of clay to create an environment to accommodate her body ‘with laborious pushing, crawling, scratching and climbing.’ (Shamman 2013). She then casts a sculpture of the interior of the sheath to demonstrate the effect that her actions have had, how the ‘impressions of feet, knees, elbows and fingers defining the surface condition, frozen imprints of her movements’ have embodied the effect she has had on her environment. Leite describes the antithesis of her work as ‘a body fixed and defined by its social functions, by its temporal and political contexts. A body that isn’t allowed to change is a body as prison.’ (Shamman 2013). If we do not allow the environment around us to change and are ignorant to the effects that the inhabitants have on their environment, we are keeping our environment in a virtual prison of time. We should permit new inhabitants of the city to shape and mould it, as the built environment catalogues the marks we have all left behind. Democratic Catalyst of Change
The
1972 film, Roma, by director Federico