Moltisolitudine, Beyond Media

By Chiara Stanzani - 11 January 2010

“Moltisolitudine” is the name of the project that Studio DAP and A.polis presented at the “Deep Inside” exhibition staged as part of the 7th International Architecture in Video Festival, “Beyond Media 2003”, at Florence’s Stazione Leopolda. The theme was “Intimacy”. The sides of this layered glass enclosure (1.3 x 3.6 m) are completely taken over by backlit coloured photos of lush woodland, while intermediary layers of coloured film on ceiling, floor and back wall create a warm enveloping atmosphere that nonetheless preserve the transparency of glass.
A layer of earth is visible under the glass slabs of the raised floor.
On stepping inside, the visitor has an altered perception of his surrounding space. External illumination filters into the enclosure as soft, diffused light. Two semi-transparent screens project life-size pictures of a crowd of people. Walking through the gap between the screens, the visitor literally passes beyond the crowd into a final space bounded by a mirror wall: an abstract space of intimacy and isolation reached by moving away from others through the agency of nature but also technology.
Once beyond the wall of people, the visitor is symbolically confronted with his own reflection. “We plunge ourselves into the crowd. Unseeing, people jostle, push and press against us as they pass. Our own confused identities bounce off this human wall. Leaving the crowd behind us, an indistinct figure appears coming towards us. Ourselves. We move uncertainly in this newly acquired dimension. This space of separation is a garden that must be tended and discovered with eyes closed.”

Chiara Stanzani