CONCEPT AND CONTEXT

Hidin in the City, Liu Bolin, 2011

"to be a body, is to be tied to a certain world...our body is not primarily in space: it is of it." – Merleau-Ponty

So far I have mentioned that a large part of my work will deal with camouflage and also introduced some of the types of the techniques used in the World Wars and in architecture.  However, I still need to provide the conceptual framework for the use of the term.

Camouflage is normally associated with the act of becoming invisible or hiding, which is not my goal for the architectural strategy.  For me, it will be the only first step, an important one though, for the immersion of the building in his environment. An act of absorbing the context and developing its own identity from it. Laura Levin further develops this approach:

“I suggest alternative ways of reading camouflage: as a political critique of structures of visibility; as a mischievous tactic of infiltration; as an empathetic response to the other; and as a form of eco-activism. “

In her book Performing Ground (2014), Levin challenges artists and theorists to understand the different bodies that compose the background in performing practice. For her, the recent impulse in performing arts of blurring the edges between the main figure and the ground should be seen as a productive and permeable relationship between the self and the world. She proposes that this blending relationship makes the figure gain (instead of losing) support and political perspective.

It reminded me of the paradoxical way in which Geneviève Brisac described Liu Bolin’s presence in each of his scenes of the book Hiding in the City: invisible and/or invincible? Fragile and/or firm?